Soom. . a 
SlaaAcas F e, 


Working With Christ for India 


Oscar MacMillan Buck 


To 
My Indian Friends 
Whose Composite Picture 
Appears in the 
Fazl Masth 
of These Pages 


Copyright, 1922, by Arthur F. Stevens 


The Bible text printed in this volume is taken from the American Standard Edition of the Revised Bible, 
Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and is used by permission 


CHICAGO 


Lue eMrtaopisr Boor —Goncrmrn 
( Founded 178g ) RE 


NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


BOSTON PITTSBURGH LGNINIGYANS (CIMOE DETROIT ‘ SAN FRANCISCO 
PORTLAND, OREGON 


WORKING WITH CHRIST FOR INDI 


Oscar MacMillan Buck 


A course of twelve studies 


I 


a ee 8 ne 


India’s Place in the World 


Scripture References: Luke 14. 25-27; 10. 38-42; Mark 6. 34-44 


It WAS EASTER MORNING — 
Easter of 1922—that I discovered my 
good friend and neighbor Thomas Gray 
in trouble. I stepped into his home 
after the sunrise service to bid him 
Easter cheer and felt at once the storm 
raging in that family circle, so closely 
knit together in pride and joy and deep 
affection. It was more than a storm: 
it was an earthquake; and even an out- 
sider like myself could from his distance, 
as on a seismograph, detect clearly the 
upheaval as it rose and fell and rose 
again. Not that anything was said— 
just then. It was all too deep and 
fundamental for any words. I sensed 
it and I left. 

Thomas Gray’s two hobbies were his 
family and his country. As he loved 
one so he loved the other. As he served 
one so he served the other. America 
and home were the two great pillars 
that upheld his life. If any great Sam- 
son of circumstance should lean against 
them too heavily, his life was ruined. 
This passion for America was the spirit 
of his ancestors living again in him— 
noble men and women who had shown 
their patriotism in true sacrifice and 
suffering. This passion for home was 
the gentle work of Hannah Gray, his 
wife, and of John and Eleanor, their 
children, upon a life capable of deep 
emotions. In the laboratory of his 
soul, year after year, the chemistry of 
their love worked wonders. To keep 
his home unbroken and to keep Amer- 
ica unsullied by the outer world, per- 
fect and self-sustaining within her own 
borders,—these were the Master lights 
of all his seeing. 

And now from the depths he cried 
out in pain. 

A Letter That Troubled 


My telephone rang, and Thomas 
Gray called me back. When I reached 
his home, he segted me and then in 
silence laid a letter on my lap. I 
picked it up and read: 


“DEAREST FATHER: 

“TI am strangely moved to-night and 
cannot sleep. One of the fellows 
brought to the college dormitory a 


friend of his—a young Christian Indian, 
from India, who is a student in another 


college. His name is Fazl Masih (I had 


him write it down for me), which means > 


‘the grace of Christ.’ He sat down 
among us, a little group of seven in my 
room, and just talked. It was not his 
words alone but his whole person that 
glowed with some strange power. Our 
hearts burned within us as he talked. 
He is strangely quiet, and we grew 
strangely quiet too. He has only two 
topics on which he loves to talk, and 
by the hour he talks on either or on 
both. Frequently he puts the two to- 
gether. I never saw a man who could 
talk of Christ by the hour as he does and 
all the while hold us rapt in wonder. 
He spoke long of troubled India and 
then of Christ and India. At the end 
he said, very quietly and very simply 
but just as if the Christ were speaking: 
“Will not some of you come out and, in 
this troubled land of mine, live the 
Christ life before my people?’ And, 
father, I laid my hand in his and prom- 
ised to _Prepare myself for this great 
service.’ 


“Tom,” I said as I handed the letter 
back to Mr. Gray, “I know Faz] Masih. 
We were boys together—he in the mis- 
sion school and I in the missionary’s 
home. He is coming this week to see 


me. Before you answer John’s letter 
talk with him.” 

And that is how the whole thing 
started. | f 

The Grace of Christ’’ 

It was only three days later that 
Thomas Gray met Fazl Masih, tall 
and slender, his face a walnut brown, 
his hair black and shining, dressed as we 
dress except for the Indian turban, 
which, in accordance with our custom, 
he removed on entering the house. 
Mr. Gray looked into his eyes and felt 
the subtle power of a radiant personality. 

Seated in the home of Thomas Gray, 
we came right to the point. 

“T have only one son, Mr. — what 
shall I call you?” 

“Fazl Masih—the grace of Christ,” 
answered the man of India. “The 
two words cannot be separated even in 
America.” 

““Fazl Masih, I have one son, on 
whom my affections and my hopes are 
focused. I have planned large things 
for him. He is to be wealthy, famous, a 
power 1n the church and the community, 
a true patriot serving America joyfully, 
ungrudgingly in these years when 
America, if ever, needs loyal sons and 
daughters, when American institutions 
and ideals are in such imminent danger 
of disintegration. And you have won 


his heart for India—a land far off, filled 


India’s snow-capped mountains 


with countless heathen people who can 
_ neither read nor write, a land of really 
small significance to the world. I mean 
this: it makes little difference to the rest 
of the world whether India is prosperous 
or not, whether its people are ignorant, 
superstitious, poor, or not. So they 
have been through the ages. Why not 
let them remain so—at least as far as 
the rest of the world is concerned? And 
what is India to America—is it not 
England’s concern rather than ours? 
England does not send missionaries to 
the Philippines. That is our business. 
Why should America, then, assume 
the responsibility of the British 
churches? You take John from us and 
what do you do? You break up our 
home, you bring shadows and darkness 
over our lives in these years when chil- 
dren are a comfort and blessing to 
parents, you ruin the career of a bril- 
liant young man. You deprive Amer- 
ica of one who has been nourished in the 
ideals of Washington and Franklin and 
Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt. 
You waste his ability and fineness of 
temper on crude material, on people 
who, for the present time at least, have 
a very small part in the world’s affairs. 
I am speaking frankly—perhaps of- 
fensively.” 


Fazl Masih Tells a Parable 


Fazl Masih smiled sadly ere he re- 
plied: 

“Once there was a king whose king- 
dom was very great; and his servants 
built him, out of the oak and walnut, 
the cherry and maple, which grew in 
great forests in one part of his kingdom, 
wonderful palaces and cities. But there 
lay in another corner of his kingdom 
a great forest, where the trees grew 
thick and uncut. When the king spoke 
of that forest, his servants ever replied: 
‘Lord, the forest is distant, and the 
trees are strange. Nothing can be made 
there worth the trouble and expense. 
Are not these palaces of thine numer- 
ous and beautiful enough to please 
thee? We will build more and larger!’ 
But the king was unsatisfied and called 
his son, who was trained in woodcraft 
(many called him the carpenter) and 
sent him without noise and with a few 
loyal and skilled workmen into that 
great southern forest. There they 
found strange woods indeed—ebony 
and mahogany, teak and sandal, sal 
and rose—; and there in that distant 
region went up a temple that to those 
who entered it seemed so richly filled 
with the glory and praise of God as to 
cause them great wonder why the 
temple had not been built long before. 
And the king found great delight in it, 


I—India’s Place in the World | 


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BAY OF BENGAL SS (SS 


A map of India 


especially so because it was the wood- 
craft of his own son and those who went 
with him.” 

“That is only a parable,” said Mr. 
Gray. 

“Did not our Christ use parables to 
teach us truths that otherwise we should 
not have learned?” 

“Yes, but this age wants facts, not 
parables; knowledge, not sentiment,” 
answered Mr. Gray, I thought rather 
sharply. 

“It thinks it does,” answered Fazl 
Masih; “but the human heart does not 
change. Deep down its intellectual 
creed of the survival of the fittest, in 
which all its striving and competitions 
express themselves so naturally, gives 
way to the ineradicable belief in the 
value of individuality. “To seek and to 
save that which was lost’ is not, even 
to this materialistic age, the last ab- 
surdity; it is a part of the eternal fitness 
of things. To seek and to save India is, 
strange to say, not mocked at any 
longer, but, as never before, seems the 
proper thing to do. So does the hu- 
man heart belie the human head even 
in our age.” 

2 


Eleanor had come in. 
“You folks are getting: beyond me,” 
she said, laughing. 


Practical Matters 


“Well, let us be practical, then,” 
said Fazl Masih, smiling. “And let me 
introduce you to my country and its 
place in the world. I would much 
rather talk of three hundred and nine- 
teen millions of people and what would 
take place if Jesus, the risen Christ, 
should lay his hand on each of them in 
turn and bid him look up and see, rise 
and walk, and sin no more, and come, 
and abide, and go, and do all the other 
blessed things he gave folks to do when 
living in the flesh. But this is the twen- 
tieth century, and Christians like other 
reasons—reasons purged of all senti- 
ment. The Shepherd to-day must ex- 
plain in psychology and economics and 
world politics why he left the ninety and 
nine and went after the one. And to his 
friends in his home he must interpret 
the strategy of the rescue and give 
adequate reasons for "his joy. Am I 
speaking offensively now, Mr. Gray?” 

“We are quits, Faz! Masih. Go on.” 


“Did you ever think, Mr. Gray, how 
closely tied together the nations of the 
new world find themselves? Telegraphs 
and cables, railroads and steamship 
lines, the airplane, wireless, and now 
the radio, commerce, literature, travel, 
conferences, labor movements and 
unions, the Christian missionary enter- 
prise, war, peace, politics and diplo- 
macy, health and disease, science, art,— 
the lines of all of these are gone out to 
the ends of the earth. These are the 
threads that weave our human life into 
one garment. As was the Christ’s robe, 
so will this robe soon become—one, 
woven from top to bottom without 
seam. And in this woven garment 
India holds an important place. With- 
out India the world would suffer lack. 
Its size, geographical location, large 
population, ancient history and achieve- 
ments, products, spirit,—all these stand 
ready to enrich our common humanity. 
India comes no beggar to the banquet 
hall of the association of nations, hold- 
ing out her hands and asking in God’s 
mercy an alms; she comes with a long 
train of servants bearing rich viands. 
Yet in all her wealth she lacks the one 
thing needful, lacking which all else is 
poverty: she lacks the living Christ.” 


India’s Commercial Position 


Could you have seen the face of Fazl 
Masih—it was the face of Him who, see- 
ing the multitudes, “had compassion 
on them, because they were as sheep 
not having a shepherd.” The man of 
India continued: 

“Take India’s size—as large as the 
United States east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, or forty times the size of the 
State of Ohio. In geographical position 
India is Asia abutting on the southern 
ocean, where Europe is Asia thrown 
into the Atlantic, and China Asia pro- 
jecting into the Pacific. All the vessels 
plying the Indian Ocean, going from 
Europe to the Far East, pass its doors. 
Many are drawn in to carry off its jute 
and wheat, cotton and sugar, hides and 
tea, in exchange for manufactured ar- 
ticles of various sorts. 

“India’s contribution is twofold—the 
things of the farm and the things of the 
spirit. Food for the body and food for 
the soul does India offer to receive in 
turn the manufactured articles of civil- 
ization. Yet even here there is a change; 
for India, since the war, is rapidly de- 
veloping its industries, but not to the 
diminution of its greatest interests— 
agriculture and religion. 

“And India, Mr. Gray, is now a link 
in the give-and-take of international 
dealing. India’s poverty lowers the 
prosperity of the world; India’s present 


I—India’s Place in the World 


unrest adds to the general confusion 
and distress; India’s fever of ignorance 
and superstition and disease affects the 
health of the world.” 


Interdependent 


“Yes,” I interrupted, “take this from 
a recent magazine: “The chairman of 
the greatest British banking institution 
—the Right Honorable Reginald Mc- 
Kenna—at the annual meeting of the 
stockholders of that institution a few 
weeks ago, illustrating how the influ- 
ence of depression in one country ex- 
tends to another country, called atten- 
tion to the fact that the falling off of 
sales of tea in Russia had depressed the 
tea industry in India, and that this loss 
of buying power in the chief market for 
British cotton goods had caused unem- 
ployment in Manchester, which in turn 
had affected the prosperity of the cot- 
ton growers in the United States. We 
know that the effects did not end with 
the cotton growers, for their loss of 
income was reflected in unemployment 
throughout the industries.’ ! 

“T am a student of this country,” 
continued Faz] Masih after a pause, 
“come to your shores to study from this 
side our common world. The West sees 
with one eye, the East with another; 
and the two must focus ere we can have 
true vision. Is it not so? India has for 
long centuries looked at life from the 
viewpoint of the spiritual and the eter- 
nal, and you have been looking at it 
with an eye to the material and tempo- 
ral. Are your desires not for your son, 
John, as you have just now expressed 
them, desires that have to do with 
success and prosperity in the things of 
this life? Is that the extent of your 
ambition for your son? India would 
correct—or, rather, complete—the am- 
bition. It would be to the rich nations 
of the West the apostle of spiritual 
wealth and power, and they in turn 
might teach it to value more the good 
things of the here and now. So, hand 
in hand, they will enjoy God’s time and 
God’s eternity, God’s things of sense and 
his things of spirit, with the Christ, who 
sums them all up in himself as the center 
and inspiration of their common life.” 


An Apt Analogy 


“You mean,” said Mr. Gray,—and I 
was amazed at his insight—‘“‘that India 
is Mary, who sits to listen and to learn 
and to worship; while America is Mar- 
tha, busied about many things and 
troubled oe 

“Put it that way if you will,” said 
Faz] Masih. “What I mean is this: 
Each sister has her place, and both to- 
gether make for Lazarus and for Jesus 

1 Our World, April, 1922. 

3 


the home. If we despise Martha, then 
there is no eating; and if Mary has no 
recognition, then there is no spiritual 
insight or inspiration at the common 
meal.” 

“You are again getting too deep for 
me,” said Eleanor, rising. 

India in World Politics 


“Sit down, Miss Eleanor, and we will 
come back to something more simple. 
How about world politics? I suppose 
you know that India for a hundred 
years or more has been making and re- 
making the maps of the world. Is India 
of little consequence to the world out- 
side her borders, of little consequence 
to America? Did you never realize 
how central the place of India is in 
world politics? 

“No, I never did,” said Mr. Gray. 
“I doubt if you can make your point.” 

“Then listen, sir,” said Fazl Masih. 
“India has been and still is the rudder 
of British foreign policy. Great Britain 
has steered its course consistently, with 
all its consequences, according to the 
safety of India. 

“The British occupation of South 
Africa and East Africa; the Russian 
pressure to the east for a warm-water 
harbor, with its effects on Japan; the 
opening of China to trade; the British 
taking over of Egypt and the Sudan; 
the preservation of the Ottoman Em- 
pire; British policies in Afghanistan, 
Tibet, and Persia; the Anglo-Japanese 
alliance; the British mandates in Meso- 
potamia and Palestine; the attempts 
to come to terms with the Bolsheviki of 
Russia,—all these more or less directly 
are due to India. 

“But it is not this that concerns me,” 
Faz] Masih added quickly. ‘“T¢ is far 
more important that India find its place 
in the empire of Christ than be the corner 
stone in the structure of the British Em- 
pire.” 


Discussion Questions 


WHY should America assume responsi- 
bility for the religious welfare of a de- 
pendency of Great Britain? 

What is the meaning of the parable 
told by Fazl Masih? 

What strategic place in the family of 
nations does India occupy? 

Name some geographical and material 
factors that make India one of the 
world’s greatest countries. 

How big is India? (Compare with 
the United States.) 

Is India solely an agricultural nation? 

What special contribution has India 
to offer Western civilization? 

To what extent do conditions in India 
control world politics? Explain. 


II 


Can Any Good Thing Come Out of 


K hairpur? 


Scripture References: John 1. 43-46; Mark 16. 14, 15; Matt. 18. 10-14 


THE NEXT FRIDAY John came 
home for the spring vacation, and I 
persuaded Faz] Masih to spend some 
days with us. I shall always remember 
the morning when we rode back in Mr. 
Gray’s big car from an inspection of the 
modern dairy in which he had a con- 
trolling interest. Fazl Masih had been 
greatly impressed, and the reason I 
partly understood even before he him- 
self declared it: “Kindness to animals 
is part of my Hindu heritage. There is 
no country in the world in which ani- 
mals and birds are so fearless. Even 
animals that destroy human life go un- 
harmed because we do not like to kill. 
Kindness to insects and reptiles, to birds 
and beasts, and cruelty to living men 
and women and little children! That 
is the way of India—and of the 
world.” 

We sat in silence, and Fazl Masih 
went on: “It is that which hurt the 
Christ, but fails to hurt us as it should. 
We continue in his name to lift sheep 
out of the pit while we allow a man’s 
arm to remain withered, to loose the 
ox and the ass from the stall and lead 
them to watering from sanitary pumps 
while women are kept in bondage. We 
keep modern d:iri s and at the same 
time, without a thought, let little chil- 
dren perish like flies on sticky fly 
paper.” 

“When did I ever do such a thing?” 
asked Mr. Gray rather warmly. 

“Mr. Gray, you are near-sighted, as 


are most men and women, and your 
hearing is not acute.” 

“Father sees and hears perfectly.” 
It was Eleanor who interrupted almost 
savagely, taking her father’s part. 


Near-Sightedness 


“Yes, Miss Eleanor, his immediate 
surroundings he sees perfectly; his 
home, his dairy, his community, his 
friends. He is a good father, a good 
citizen, an asset to his town. But, Miss 
Eleanor,—but, Mr. Gray, the multi- 
tudes of earth are strangcrs to you and 
outside your ken. Somehow to those 
who company much with Jesus they 
appear. Out of the distant places they 
come, not in massed battalions but as 
scattered sheep, not having a shepherd. 
The heart melts with pity at the sight; 
it is ‘moved with compassion’—moved 
to do something. “Then saith he’— 
do you remember the “words?— pray 

and he sent and he went.’ 

“Mr. Gray, the multitudes of earth 
have never thronged you by day nor 
filled your dreams by night. They have 
never been your agony in prayer nor 
your cross in sacrifice. You have 
struggled up no mountain of effort, 


crying: “My God! My God! Earth’s 
hungry! Earth’s ignorant! Earth’s 
sinful! Earth’s diseased!’ The lepers, 


the lame, the blind, the poor, the pal- 
sied, the dead, have never called you 
forth at evening, weary and exhausted, 
to further effort, to more healing. No 


A typical village courtyard and house 


city has ever dropped its sick and its 
possessed-with-devils at your door, 
My village, Khairpur, is nothing to you; 
yet there children grow up, if they do 
grow up at all, in filth and ignorance 
and sin. Even if I tear up the roof of 
your ignorance and let them down to 
you, as men did with the Teacher, you 
will not heal them, you will not heal the 
palsy of their souls or their minds or 
their bodies. And there are 740,000 
such villages in India alone. And what 
of China and Africa and Europe and the 
many places in America which IJ have 
seen?” 

“It is just that,” answered Mr. Gray. 
“One cannot heal all, you know. It is 
hopeless. Therefore, why heal any? 
It cannot be done in one generation. 
Slowly, as the new ideas and methods 
spread through the earth, the sorrows 
of earth will be healed, its injustices 
righted. As in the healing of any sore 
nature must be given time, so for the 
healing of mankind it is a matter for 
time, and time will do it.” 

“Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for 
to-morrow /¢hey die,” added Faz] Masih. 
“Did you ever hear, John, the sequel to 
the parable of the lost sheep?” 

“T didn’t know there was a sequel,” 
answered John. 


A Parable’s Sequel 


“All the parables of Jesus have se- 
quels. Listen to one: One day, after 
the one lost sheep had been restored, 
the shepherd was called to a wedding 
and left the fold with his servants. 
Very soon after that, by their stupid 
carelessness, the ninety and nine be- 
came lost in the wilderness, and only 
the one remained. Someone suggested 
they leave the one and go after the 
ninety and nine that were lost until 
they find them. ‘Too many,’ an- 
swered the servants. ‘Give them time, 
and they will.return of their own ac- 
cord. .4 

Eleanor broke in, laughing. “Leave 
them alone, and they’ll come home, 
dragging their tails behind them.” 

Fazl Masih was delighted. “Thank 
you, Miss Eleanor, for that. Bo Peep 
and Jesus—the two ways of dealing 
with lost sheep and lost men. When 
the shepherd returned from the wed- 
ding, what did he do to those Bo Peeps 
of his? Having none of his spirit, they 
had no further place in his employ.” 


II—Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Khairpur ? 


“You are much too emotional and 
sentimental for me,” remarked Mr. 
Gray in a cold manner. “I am a busi- 
ness man, practical and looking to 
profits. Suppose I do scatter my gifts 
and my children over the world: what 
results do I see? Here a little, there a 
little—like fireflies in the darkness. 
On the other hand, I confine my efforts 
to a smaller elds co my family, to my 
church, to my town, to my nation: 
how fuch greater the effect of my life! 
If America is rendered great and beau- 
tiful and good, other nations will of 
themselves follow her. Let us lead and 
not drive the world into the kingdom 
of God. Besides, is it not better to let 
an Indian village—your unpronounce- 
able village—rest in its simplicity, even 
in its poverty and ignorance and super- 
stition, than to rouse it to our foreign 
and Western complexities in which 
even we are not freed from those self- 
same evils? The Indian villager is far 
happier and better off than the in- 
dustrial worker, underpaid and poorly 
housed and morally disintegrating, who 
is the symbol and product of our 


boasted ‘civilization’ of Europe and 
America.” 
Salt Without Savor 
“Mr. Gray,” replied Fazl Masih, 


“when the Teacher said, ‘Go ye into all 
the world’ did he not mean a// the 
world? Is not America part of that all? 
And is not India a part too? A Chris- 
tian civilization—not Western, mind 
you—which is satisfied with less than 
universality is by that very fact not the 
best civilization, and we must look 
hastily for another. To leave out a 
single American town or a single Indian 
village from the Christian program is 
to take out the ferment from the yeast 
or the savor from the salt, and salt 
that has lost savor 

“Ts fit only for the garbage can,” 
added John. 

Fazl Masih nodded approval and 
looked out of the window. For a mile 
or more nobody spoke, and all that 
could be heard was the purring of the 
big engine. 

When he turned toward us again, 'a 
sadness was in his eyes. ‘Mr. Gray, 
John, Miss Eleanor, have you ever 
been afraid? Have you ever been terri- 
fied?” 

“Yes,” laughed Eleanor. “When 
father was learning to drive a car, we 
were all stiff with fright, weren’t we, 
father?” 

Mr. Gray smiled. 


tease me, Faz] Masih.” 


“They like to 


The Paralysis of Fear 
“That is just the point, Mr. Gray. 


In America you laugh at fear, you joke 
about it. But if this were the dead of 
night, and footpads and cutthroats were 
all about us, lurking behind every tree 
and fence post, and watching their 


chance to shoot and rob and maim and 
outrage, then would fear settle in the 
heart, and look out through the eyes, 
and chill and paralyze the whole body. 


A group of Hindu priests 


Even a Six would cease to be 
a car of comfort.” 

“What horrible things you suggest!” 
answered Eleanor, looking around sus- 
piciously even in the broad daylight. 

“T was thinking of Khairpur, where I 
was born,” continued Fazl Masih, 
“where men and women and little 
children journey through life with fear 
as their constant companion. From 
childhood to old age they walk in the 
valley of the shadow of death, and they 
fear all evil.” 

“What are they afraid of?” 
John. 

“Of footpads and cutthroats,” an- 
swered Fazl Masih, “who rob and beat 
and maim and outrage. They swarm 
in the fields and in the narrow alleys, 
they infest the roads and the tree tops, 
they climb the roofs and jump the 
walls and enter the courtyards. When 
doors are open and not heavily pro- 
tected, they slip inside the mud houses 
and there do their deadly work. Of in- 
fants they are especially fond, and 
mothers have no peace of mind. The 
sick they torture. The dying they ter- 
rify. They have no mercy on the poor 

ws) 


asked 


and unfortunate. Mr. Gray, the 
simplicity of an Indian village may be 
really restful after the complexity of 
your life; but fear, which rules in every 
Indian village, poisons the air and 
makes life pale and sickly. Condemn 
the natives to simplicity—you have 
passed a light sentence—; condemn 
them to life-l you load them 
with heavy chains and bind them in 
slavery.” 

“T thought India was ruled by the 
British. Do the British permit such 
disorder?” asked Eleanor, mystified. 


. Unseen Assailants 


“The British have nothing to do with 
the disorder and fear,” answered Fazl 
Masih. “It is not human hands the 
villagers fear but evi/ spirits—troops of 
them, unseen, invisible. In this land of 
yours, because of centuries of Christian 
teaching, men do not fear the super- 
natural. Consequently, in spite of 
much ignorance and poverty, life re- 
mains worth living. On the whole it is 
good; and where life is good, there 
civilization develops. But in Khairpur, 
Wittnitonbhrce-—qrenters—-ofe—nrtt ire n 
people, the supernatural is unfriendly, 
and life is a slavery of fear. Did slaves 
ever build for themselves a civilization? 
Can any good thing come out of Khair- 
pur?” 

“You came out of Khairpur,” 
John, smiling. 

“Not came out, John, but drawn out. 
Would you hear my story—the story of 
an Indian village boy?” 

“T’d Jove to.’ Eleanor was so ve- 
hement that Fazl Masih was thrown 
into confusion. 


Fazl Masih’s Life Story 


“Tt is not so wonderful as that, Miss 
Eleanor; yet it is wonderful. God 
works his miracles in India too. Our 
parched, brown soil, dried and cracked 
and blistered for months by a pitiless 
sun and hot winds that blow unceas- 
ingly from some huge, unseen furnace, 
looks most unpromising. You would 
say 1t was desert country. Yet give it 
one soaking rain, and overnight, as if 
the rain were some magic wand waved 
over it and laid upon it, it literally 
flings aside its dress of brown and 
adorns itself in loudest colors. India is 
Cinderella: every year it enacts the 
play—sits in the ashes and then goes to 
the party. So is the Indian villager. 
His life is the color of the soil he works, 
and over which his half-starved cattle 
feed; but give him a chance, a real 
chance, and out of Khairpur even can 
come : 

“Fazl Masih,” broke in Eleanor once 
more. 


said 


II—Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Khairpur ? 


“Only, Miss Eleanor, the chance 
rarely comes to Indian boys and girls. 
They sit by ashes all their lives, and 
very, very few go to the party. The 
mice and pumpkin-shell coach rarely 
travel the rough dirt roads that hold 
the Indian villages together.” 

“But you have been Cinderella, Fazl 
Masih. Who waved a wand over you 
and brought you out?” 

“T was born in Khairpur in a little 
mud hut with a grass thatch, all set in a 
little. mud courtyard with mud walls.” 

“Rather muddy, I should say,” said 
Mr. Gray. 

“Yes, Mr. Gray,—mud and brown 
thatch and cow-dung plaster and cow- 
dung fuel; brown bamboo cots strung 
with brown hemp rope; baked-mud 
cooking vessels and eating vessels; a 
mud stove; brown children; brown 
mother and father wearing brown 
clothes (our muddy village ponds never 
wash white); two light-brown goats; a 
black pig covered with dried slime; a 
broom of twigs; no chairs; no spoons, 
no forks, no table knives; brown- 
leather (for my father worked in hides) 
lamps of baked clay with mustard oil 
and a cotton wick; brown millstones 
grinding bajra and juar and, very 
rarely, a little wheat; a brown stone and 
brown pestle for the grinding of the 
spices; no chimney (the smoke had 
blackened the inside of the hut); one 
room for the whole family and the 
animals as well.” 


“How large?” asked Eleanor. 

“About twice the size of this car,” 
answered Fazl Masih. 

“Whew!” Eleanor almost whistled. 


Everyday Life in India 
“One meal a day; hard, hard work 


IT CAN SCARCELY BE too often 
repeated to all who are interested 
in the religion of India that in 
daily experience the ordinary dis- 
trict missionary sees a great deal 
more of devil worship than of what 
is known as ‘‘the higher Hindu- 


ism.”’ . The pariah lives in 
dread of the supernatural. He is 
afraid even to yawn for fear some 
hateful being will gain entrance 
to his body. He dare not pass one 
street corner at noonday and an- 
other at night for the unseen ter- 
rors that lurk there. There is no 
safety for him anywhere, for even 
if out of his hard-earned wage he 
has spent money on a sacrifice to 
the demon or deity of one local 
shrine, he may by that very pious 
act have slighted and offended 
some other supernatural being 
near by, and there is no knowing 
what the consequences will be.— 


The Outcastes’ Hope, Brigés. 
Phillies 


all day at leather and in the fields; a 
brown-clay tobacco pipe with black 
tobacco the sole refreshment for the 
men; no refreshment for the women 
except their chatter, and the singing 
at weddings, and the mourning at 
funerals, and early marriage, and the 
bearing and burying of many infants 


JS cal, Bie SRM 


The Hindu goddess Kali 


(they lose half of their babies), and an 
occasional journey to the me/a fair and 
the holy places of pilgrimage, and the 
bathing festivals, where they laughed 
and wondered and saw and_ heard 
things too often not good for them; and 
then the cholera and the smallpox and, 
later, the bubonic plague and other 
horrible diseases of eyes and lungs and 
spleen; and in it all and through it all 
fear of the 4huts—the evil spirits—and 
all kinds of other spirits. 

“Into this I was born. From birth I 
was protected by heavy chains and 
amulets. My name was a secret name, 
like the Greek letters on your pin, 
John fi 

“Why?” asked John. 

“Lest the evil spirits learn my name 
and, by my name, get possession of me. 
A man’s name is his self. No one likes 
an evil spirit to get his self, so my 
parents would not tell me my real name 
but gave me a nickname. I learned to 
fear. I was afraid of being left alone, I 
was afraid of the dark, I was afraid of 
strange faces, I was afraid of many ani- 
mals and birds and insects. I was 
afraid of the well, I was afraid of high- 
caste men and especially the Brahman 
priests. I ran and shouted and laughed 
now and then, as any boy does; but I 
never got away from fear, as one never 
quite gets away from his shadow in the 
sunlight.” 


6 


Home Minus Fear 


“There is home,” said Mr. Gray sud- 
denly. 

“Home!” echoed Faz] Masih; “your 
home, where fear never opens the door 
and slips in to take possession.” 


Discussion Questions 
HOW DO THE PEOPLE of India look 


upon and treat animals? Is this atti- 
tude worthy of emulation? Is it car- 
ried to an extreme? 

Apply Fazl Masih’s sequel to the 
parable of the lost sheep to the attitude 
of many Americans toward missions. 

What are the arguments for world- 
wide missionary effort? 

Describe the climate of India. 

Describe a typical Indian village. 

Would you like to live under condi- 
tions such as Faz] Masih describes? 

Do women in India have much chance 
at life? 

Why is fear prevalent in India? 

Show how superstition and fear gain 
possession of outcastes in early infancy. 

Contrast these conditions with normal 
home life in America. 


THE EXPERIENCES OF LIFE are 
referred to invisible spirit forces. 
To rude men the ups and downs of 
life seem to be dependent upon the 
mere caprice of this invisible host, 
and this shadowy company of un- 
known powers is responsible for 


calamity, fever, cholera, small- 
pox, and other untoward events. 
These fickle, treacherous inhabi- 
tants of the unseen world—the 
demons and the godlings of dis- 
ease—must be conciliated; and the 
godlings, the sainted dead, and 
other well-disposed spirits must 
be enlisted against the forces of 
calamity and disease. The super- 
stitious man, of necessity, is al- 
ways on the alert to outwit evil 
and malignant spirits and to cir- 
cumvent their undertakings. . . . 
The chief of: demons is described 
variously as wheat-colored, white, 
or green. He rides on a green 
horse. The churel (a female 
demon) is described as having 
pendent breasts, large, projecting 
teeth, thick lips, unkempt hair, 
and a black tongue, and as of 
dreadful appearance. Her feet, 
like those of most evil spirits, are 
turned around. Some say that 
she is black behind and white in 
front. She is especially malignant 
toward her own family. . An- 
other much-dreaded demon (ma- 
san) is especially  ill-disposed 
toward children, whom he often 
changes to yellow, red, or green 
color. He also causes them to 
waste away and die by casting his 
shadow upon them. He is known 
only by his works and, because of 
his invisibility, is most dreaded. 
—The Chamars, Briggs. 


III 


The Education of Fazl Masih 


Scripture References: Matt. 11. 28-30; Isa. 9. 1-7; Luke 4. 1-13 


THAT SAME EVENING, shortly after 
supper, the Grays came over to “con- 
tinue the continued story,” as Eleanor 
put it. Fazl Masih had retired to his 
room, as was his custom, for an hour 
or more of quiet meditation. It is the 
habit of India to think of God much 
during the day but very much at the 
evening hour. The Moslem spreads his 
prayer rug at sunset and lifts his heart 
and bends his body before the majesty 
of Allah. The Hindu makes his way 
to the temple with offerings in his hands 
and yearnings in his heart as the shrill 
conch screeches out its call to worship 
when the brief twilight sets in. So Fazl 
Masih, Indian and Christian, made 
each evening hour a time for thought 
and gratitude and praise. 

We waited. He came down the 
stairs, his face a great calm. All the 
wrinkles of worry had been smoothed 
out. A young man he was, yet in his 
countenance and carriage were ma- 
turity and dignity and power. This 
quiet smile somehow shed restfulness 
upon our hurried, distracted spirits. 
We understood more clearly the words 
of the Teacher: ““Learn of me; . . . and 
ye shall find rest unto your souls.” 

I looked at John. He was deeply 
affected. Even Eleanor was subdued 
and did not pounce upon the Indian as 
she had come prepared to do. There 
was no embarrassment, for there was 
about Fazl Masih no cold reserve, no 
sense of far-away-ness. It was only 
that we entered upon the evening’s 
conversation more quietly, with a con- 
sciousness that life is composed not of 
mere events and incidents but of some- 
thing far deeper and more funda- 
mental. 


Alike Yet Different 


It was John who really started us off: 

“Fazl Masih, why are you so like us 
yet so different from us?” 

The Indian smiled as he replied: 

“That is very easily answered. Why 
are any two men alike and unlike? 
Do not a common humanity and a 
similar training make them alike, while 
a separate individuality and a different 
environment—either or both—make 
them unlike? My environment has 
been different, but my training has 
been similar to yours. Therefore, at 
one and the same time I feel a stranger 
and I feel at home among you. In fact, 
does not every man feel thus toward 
every other man?” 

“Tt is very strange,’ 


’ said Mr. Gray,’ 


“that we should be able to talk to- 
@ether, at all.’ 

“Tt is indeed,” answered Fazl Masih. 
“Tt is visible proof of our common 
training and our common humanity. 
The same roads of knowledge to-day 
traverse all the lands of earth, and men 
of all colors and breeds Ad religions 
keep company together—spiritual if 
not physical company—along these 
roads. It is the great wonder of our 
age. The road builders are abroad— 
and in my boyhood they ‘brought the 
road to Khairpur.” 

“Tell us about that.” Eleanor saw 
now her chance for the story she had 
come to hear. 


Building Roads 


“Miss Eleanor, many are the ene- 
mies of the Christian missionary enter- 
prise, but let this be said to its credit: 
It is preéminent in road building. You 
know what I mean: Into our divided 
separated world, each region living 
from time immemorial its own life, have 
come the men and women whose task 
it is to link the whole together into one 
common life—one education, one com- 
mercial financial and economic struc- 
ture, one type of government, one re- 
ligion, one ‘civilization,’ even one dress 
and etiquette, and perhaps some day 
one common language.” 

“English?” asked John. 

“Who knows? English certainly has 
the advantage now over others. These 
are the roads that bring the peoples to- 
gether. And in the building of these 
roads the Christian missionary enter- 
prise stands among the first both in time 
and importance. So it was the mission- 


aries that brought the road, with its 
traffic, to Khairpur; and I, a small boy, 
was first in my village to step upon it. 
That same road, after many mileposts 
have been passed, has brought me here 
and carries me hence.” 

“There is something wrong in that,” 
said Mr. Gray suddenly. 


“Father,” said Eleanor, “please don’t 
interrupt him. You see he is coming to 
pea g 
the story. 


But Fazl Masih was taken aback: 

“Wrong in what, Mr. Gray? Was it 
wrong for the read of the world’s know]- 
edge to come to Khairpur? Would you 
keep Khairpur a thousand years be- 
hind America? ‘The people that 
walked in darkness have seen a great 
light: they that dwelt in the land of 
the shadow of death, upon them hath 
the light shined’; but is it all wrong that 
it should be so—all wrong?” 

“Not so fast, Faz] Masih,” answered 
Mr. Gray. “All wrong, not that the 
knowledge came to your village, but 
that the Christian churches of America 
should have to bring it there. Edu- 
cating the millions of any nation is an 
affair of the state, as it is in America, 
and not of the church. Let the govern- 
ment of India build the roads of knowl- 
edge as they build the highroads and 
the railroads. Let the Christian mis- 
sionary enterprise give itself to preach- 
ing and organizing churches. Any 
other system is wrong from the start 
and has evil results. Why should I 
give a cent for education in India when 
the government should provide it for 
the people? Base education on taxes, 
not on charity, if you want it to suc- 
ceed. That is my opinion.” 


Lucknow Christian College 


IIlI—The Education of Fazl Masth 


Hockey at a Christian boys’ boarding school 


An Outcaste Boy 

“Mr. ‘Gray,’ replied Faz! Masih, 
“perhaps if you hear my story you will 
understand a little better. As I said 
this morning I was born one of the 
fifty or sixty million outcastes—one of 
the untouchables—and brought up in 
poverty and ignorance and fear of evil 
spirits. What chance was there for my 
life?. Weakened in body, stunted in mind 
and soul, I would have lived as had my 
forefathers for a thousand centuries. I 
was in a pit, and there was no outlet. I 
was in a dungeon, and there were no win- 
dows. Socially enslaved, economically 


enslaved, spiritually enslaved,—it was 
all hopeless, and not less so because, 
boylike, I laughed a bit and played 
jokes on my fellows and had many 
merry times at weddings and fairs and 
funeral feasts. That one laughs in a 
dungeon does not do away with the 
dungeon. 

“There was a school, not in my vil- 
lage, but in a village four miles away. 
I discovered it when once I went on an 
errand for my father. The government 
of India no doubt partially subsidized 
it—paid part of its expenses and super- 
vised it. But it was not for outcaste 


boys; only for the boys who style them- 
selves ‘twice-born.” The three highest 
castes, who wear the sacred thread, are 
twice-born (once into life and once into 
caste); the low-castes are once-born. 
As for outcastes we are, as far as hu- 
man rights are concerned, as if not born 
at all. If, therefore, before the coming 
of the English rule I had sat down with 
those boys to learn with them, the 
high-caste people would have poured 
melted lead into my ears. If I had that 
day sat down in the courtyard, even on 
the edge of the group, and repeated the 
seven-times multiplication table along 
with the rest, they would have beaten 
me with their shoes and burned my 
father’s hut and taken his ox. 


“No teacher of any caste would have 
taught me, even though the govern- 
ment paid his salary; and teachers from 
the outcastes—who shall furnish them 
unless it be the church of Him who 
touched the untouchable when, in his 
pitiful state, the leper kneeled and said, 
‘Lord, you are high caste, and if you are 
willing to overlook your high caste for a 
moment you can make me clean’? So 
no government taxation could help my 
case: I was to be saved by charity or not 
at all. Or, rather let us say, I was to be 
saved by the taxes the kingdom of 
Christ imposes on its citizens, and not 
by the taxes which the government of 
India requires the people of India to 
pay.” 

“You don’t like the word ‘“benevo- 


INDIA is the great Christian wedge 
in Asia. Geographically it is cen- 
tral, reaching out to China and 
Malaysia on the east; to Arabia and 
Egypt on the west; to Mesopo- 
tamia, Asia Minor, and Persia on 
the northwest; and to Central 
Asia on the north. What is done 
in India must ultimately touch all 
Asia. 

In religion India has always been 
Asia’s spiritual leader—andé still is. 
India is the land where the su- 
preme contest between the great 
religions of the world must take 
place. These religions are Hindu- 
ism, Mohammedanism, and Chris- 
tianity; and in no other land or 
continent are they all represented; 
the contact comes only in India. 

India has 217,000,000 Hindus, 
66,000,000 Mohammedans, and 4,- 
000,000 Christians. The supreme 
question is: Which of these is to 
rule the destiny of this great land? 
As goes India, so goes Asia. ... 

Under the tuition of the British, 
with their educational system and 
the free institutions of a Christian 
civilization, India has enjoyed ad- 
vantages that no other land of 
Asia ever had. The natural result 


of Western ideals and Christian 


progress is a new national spirit, 
striving for untramelled, inde- 
pendent expression. With this 
spirit pervading the land India’s 
people have entered upon a new 
era, in which the foundations of 
home rule are being laid. The 
nation is plastic; the hour of 
change has come. This is the su- 
preme opportunity for truth; there- 
fore for Christianity. 

Twenty-five years ago the Hindu 
father was still asking whether a 
girl was worth education; he has 
ceased to ask that question. Ten 
years ago the caste system seemed 
to have yielded very little to the 
pressure of Christian teaching and 
Western civilization; to-day many 
of the strongest opponents to caste 
are found among the Hindus 
themselves. It is still compara- 
tively rare for a Hindu widow to be 
remarried; but the exceptions are 
becoming more frequent and at- 
tracting less attention. India’s 
widows will yet be liberated; noth- 
ing else is possible in new Ind a. 

India is also the supreme meet- 
ing place of the West and East. 
Nowhere else has this been on such 
a scale, for so many centuries, or 
at such close quarters. Europe 


and America have sent some of 
their strongest sons and noblest 
daughters to India, and here they 
have met and mingled with India 
at her best. This has brought 
about a new international situa- 
tion. India has become the great 
interpreter of the West to the East, 
and the East to the West. It is 
God’s school for the continents. 
When the course is completed, the 
East will have been brought to her 
best, and the West will have been 
immeasurably enriched. Then 
shall we have the brotherhood that 
Christ has held before the world 
for nineteen centuries—in India, 
the first home of the Christian 
brotherhood! 

This is why the eyes of the world 
are on India. This is why every 
missionary is glad to be here; why 
no missionary is willing to remain 
away. This is the reason for the 
awakening among Indian Chris- 
tian men and women, who are not 
only working for a pure and power- 
filled Indian church, alert to the 
opportunities of the new era, but 
looking also for the supreme na- 
tional movement that will make 
India a Christian nation.—B. T. B. 
in the Indian Witness. 


ae 


pete 


P 


lences’ for our missionary offerings?” 
asked John. 

“Not at-all,’ answered Fazl Masih. 
“Mere wishing well (which, as you 
know, is the meaning of this word) will 
never bring the kingdom of Christ to 
every Khairpur and every boy and girl 
therein. Wishes breed alms of copper 
and nickel and small silver, but de- 
termination and duty bring into play 
prayer and sacrifice and the giving of 
life itself.” f 


Fazl Masih’s Chance 


“Well, one day,” continued Fazl 
Masih, “my father met a distant 
relative who had become Christian and 
heard of the escape from the pit—of a 
chance for his son. 

“He was more than a well-wisher as 
he thought of his son. He was willing 
to pay the price of becoming a Chris- 
tian. In it my mother joined for the 
sake of the boy. The price was very 
heavy—social ostracism and nagging 
persecution. My father and mother 
suddenly became strangers to their own 
relatives and fellow outcastes. They 
were outcast from the outcaste state: 
they fell from the bottom into the bot- 
tomless. They became Issi (Jesus 
folk) and for Jesus’ sake were literally 
‘hated of all men.’ But in the darker 
hour of being despised and rejected 
even by those who were themselves 
despised and rejected, a light began to 
kindle and to burn—a strange light for 
an Indian village. The evil spirits took 
fright at that light, a new look came on 
my parents’ faces (it was the light 
forcing its way outward as well as in- 
ward), and, strangest of all, a small boy 
began to wonder in the shining of that 
light what a village boy, of outcaste 
birth, might become if he learned his 
letters. Never in all his life before had 
he dreamed a dream or seen a vision; 


YOUR STATE EDUCATION is pro- 
ducing a revolt against three prin- 
ciples which, although they were 
pushed too far in ancient India, 
represent the deepest wants of hu- 
man nature—the principle of dis- 
cipline, the principle of religion, 
the principle of contentment. 


. . . In due time you will have on 
your hands an overgrown clerkly 
generation, whom you have trained 


in their youth to depend on govern- 
ment allowances and to look to 
government service, but whose 
adult ambitions not all the offices 
of government would satisfy. What 
are you to do with this great clever 
class forced up under a foreign 
system without discipline, without 
contentment, and without a God? 
—Sir William Wilson Hunter in 
The Old Missionary. 


III—The Education of Fazl Masih 


now something was loose inside him 
that made him restless. A shining 
gleam was urging him to ‘follow the 
gleam’!” 

“Tennyson in an Indian village,” 
said John. 

“Christ in an Indian village,” an- 
swered Faz] Masih, laughing aloud and 
quite excited. 

“When the Christian village school 
was established, I was the first to enroll. 
There I learned my letters and to count 
—to read a little and to add and sub- 
tract.” 


From Boarding School to College 


“From the village school I was sent 
to the Christian boarding school, where, 
under Christian teachers and a Chris- 
tian missionary (who in this case loved 


An Indian Christian schoolboy 


me as his own child), I prepared for the 
Christian high school. In those years 
I learned what you learn here in the 
grades; but, more than that, I learned 
to company with Christ. I could al- 
most see him on the cricket field, in the 
classroom, and in the dormitory. Not 
to all of us but to a little group of us he 
became most real. This American mis- 
sionary talked to me much about him— 
his life, his program, his world. The 
little light that began to shine in the 
heart of the village boy became a steady 
flame, consuming yet not destroying 
all his energies. The bush burned with 
fire but was not burned up. 

“From the boarding school to the 
Christian high school; from the Chris- 
tian high school to the Christian college. 
The Christian college was both mount 
of vision and mount of temptation to 
me. I said to myself: ‘Let me show 
what a village boy can do—outcaste- 
born and Christian-trained—in _ this 
new India! It will be an object lesson 
of much value. I will rise to comfort, 
fame, and power. It will be achieve- 
ment for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.’ 
As with the Teacher, so with me: the 

9 


same temptations but dressed in Indian 
garb. Only, I had the Teacher by my 
side, whispering ever, ‘Service, not 
achievement; service, not achievement’; 
and with this word feeding the flame 
within me I turned my steps to the 
Christian theological school, where I 
spent three years.” 

“Which must have been very dreary 
and dry after college,” said Eleanor. 


The Light of India’s New Day 


“Which was rather,” said Fazl Masih, 
“the Delectable Mountains, from which 
I saw the Celestial City of my lifework; 
making the Christ the light of India’s 
new day; fo take the flame in my life and 
with it set fire to other lives. ‘ 

“When enough of us have done that, 
and the Christ light shines out strongly 
in the land, then shall India see her 
path clearly and walk safely in it.” 

Fazl Masih stopped speaking, but 
John took up the word: 

“And then become missionary to the 
rest of the world.” 


Discussion Questions 
IN WHAT SENSE can we think of the 


Christian missionary as a road builder? 
Illustrate from the lives of mission- 
aries with whose life stories you are fa- 
miliar. 

Does Christianity tend to link the 
whole world together? How? Is this 
a good thing? Why? 

Should we place all responsibility for 
the education of the outcastes of India 
upon the British government? 

Characterize the life of an outcaste 
boy. Can he go to school? 

What is meant by “twice-born” in 
India? 

Do you think the word ‘“benevo- 
lences” accurately describes missionary 
giving? Give reasons for your answer. 

What is the one sure way for an out- 
caste to gain ostracism and become 
“hated of all men’’? 

To what extent does Christ pervade 
the instruction in Christian boarding 
schools and colleges in India? 5 

How do Christian schools inspire 
native Christians to “take the flame 
and set fire to other lives”? 


INDIAN OPINION is all but unani- 
mous that education is a religious 
work, should be imparted by re- 
ligious persons, and should have 


religion as its center. . . The 
failure of government education 
in India to command respect or to 
attract the hearts of students is 
due mainly to the fact that it is 
secular.—Bishop of Bombay in 
International Review of Missions. 


IV 


The Christian Message in the Soil of 


Hinduism 


Scripture References: Acts 17. 22-31; John 3. 16; Luke 4. 18, 19 


THE NEXT AFTERNOON | Fazl 
Masih and I walked around our little 
town of three thousand inhabitants. 
He was very much interested in the 
names of our eight churches—denomi- 
national, numerical, having to do with 
Christian saints or graces, or merely the 
names of streets and avenues. I ex- 
pected him to be impatient, for to me 
eight churches in one town, like eight 
people in one small room, make for 
close air unless special precautions are 
taken to keep the windows open. But 
he was not impatient. After laughing 
at the names, which to him were odd, he 
merely remarked: 

“Your business section is all together 
and makes a massed attack on the com- 
munity life; your churches seem scat- 
tered all over the town.” 

“They certainly are,” I answered. 
“They are in fine position for sniping, 
which they do, but in poor position for 
firing volleys. Sometimes they even 
fire at one another.” 

He smiled but said no more. 

On the way home we passed the Gray 
home and found the Grays sitting on 
the porch. They called to us: 

“We have the porch furniture out 
for the first time this year. We want 
Faz] Masih to try our new porch 
swing.” 

So we went up, and Fazl Masih en- 
joyed a new experience—talking to 
eager listeners from a swing, which he 
kept in slow motion. It reminded me 
of the Teacher, who told some of his 
best stories from a rocking boat. 


The. 


easy motion took the tenseness out and 
left the grace and beauty in. 


A City of Homes and Churches 


“What do you think of our little 
town?” asked Mrs. Gray. 

“Tt is very wonderful,” he answered. 
“A city of homes is always wonderful. 
No wonder America is great—a country 
built on the principle of “to each family 
a home’—a home separated from other 
homes by lawns and gardens. The 
streets and schools and churches and 
business places serve the homes.” 

Mr. Gray was pleased, for civic pride 
was one of his well-known characteris- 
tics. “My only criticism,” he said: 
“too many churches.” 

Fazl Masih smiled again and said: 
“One born a Hindu would never say, 
‘Too many churches,’ but ‘Too many 
strange names applied to Christ’s 
people.’ If the twelve disciples of Jesus 
came to this town, where would they 
go to church? How would they divide 
themselves among those strange names? 
The Hindus have their many, many 
sects, they have their schools and orders 
and brotherhoods, they have their 
private domestic worships; but when it 
comes to the temples, they are only 
Hindu temples and open to all men— 
and women too—of the four castes. 
Public worship, like the rain or the sun 
or the sky or the air, is for all men ex- 
cepting of course the outcastes, the un- 
touchables. These have their own re- 
ligious worship. Besides the temple 
worship the places of pilgrimage and the 


Two Christian preachers—father and son 


river bathing are for all—men and 
women and children of the four castes.” 


Tribal Religion 


.““To each according to his bent,” an- 
swered Mr. Gray. ‘We Americans 
must divide. It is our instinct to do 
so.” 

“Perhaps it is heredity,’ remarked 
John, “‘perhaps it is the tribal spirit of 
our forefathers which enters into all our 
social and political and economic and 
religious organization. We go in tribes. 
Our very nation is a confederation of 
great tribes. We have tribes within 
tribes, called by various names— 
churches, unions, brotherhoods, etc. 
Perhaps it is not Christianity that is to 
blame but our instinctive habit of 
Seer everything that comes to us, 
of applying the group instincts with 
group loyalties. Hinduism may teach 
us a lesson here.” 

“No,” said Fazl Masih; “Hinduism 
is at one and the same time the most 
intolerant and most tolerant of all re- 
ligions; in certain aspects broad as the 
sky and in other aspects narrow and 
divided as a foot rule. I have been 
speaking of the broader aspects, and 
there are other facts I might mention 
along with those. I have said nothing 
about the narrow aspects. Hinduism, 
like a great boa constrictor, seizes a life 
and squeezes and cramps it until the 
bones of effort and ambition are broken, 
and the life falls into lifeless conformity 
with ancient custom.” 


Patching Up Hinduism 


“There is much of the boa con- 
strictor in our American Christianity, 
Fazl Masih,” answered Mr. Gray. 
“Really I am inclined to believe what 
we men downtown say to one another— 
that every men’s religion is true and 
good and will carry him through life if 
he only lives up to it. Hinduism is 
fitted to India, has been fitted by gen- 
eration after generation to meet India’s 
need in the way best suited to the In- 
dian temperament and mind. It may 
take a little repairing, a little repatch- 
ing here and there; but it is foolish to 
think or try to replace it with a brand- 
new religion, especially one that comes 
from us. We are so different from you, 
our religion would never quite suit or 
fit you. We shall tell you, give you 
what we have. That perhaps will help 


IV—The Christian Message in the Soil of Hinduism 


you to repair and repatch; and when 
you have done that, we won’t either of 
us be so very far wrong. The name of 
the religion doesn’t really matter—call 
it Christianity, call it Hinduism,—just 
so it helps a man lead a decent life, 
teaches him something about God, and 
fixes him up for the next life.” 

“Thomas,” gasped Mrs. Gray, for she 
had never heard him speak so openly 
along this line, “you are surrendering 
the uniqueness of Christianity.” 

BvVnyenote replied’ Mr.Gray.” “It 
Christianity teaches the fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of man, and 
Hinduism does the same, what differ- 
ence does it make about the other things 
and whether you worship in a church or 
temple? May not Hinduism become 
another ‘ism,’ like Methodism and Pres- 
byterianism,—one more denomination 
in God’s religion and one more suited 
to India than any of our eight?” 


Bursting the Bubble 


There Eleanor broke in. “‘Fazl Masih, 
what is Hinduism?” 

Fazl Masih stopped swinging. ‘‘Miss 
Eleanor, that question is the pin that 
bursts the fine bubble your father has 
been blowing. Bubbles are made by 
taking a small amount of soapy water 
and enlarging it by a great amount of 
air. A small amount of truth may be 
blown into a great amount of nonsense 
by air.” 

“Hot air,” commented Mrs. Gray. 

Fazl Masih missed the full significance 
of an Americanism as he went on: 

“There is some truth in what your 
father started out with.’ Hinduism has 
been fitted by generation to Indian life 
and temperament. Hinduism has many 
great truths that find their fulfillment 
in Christ. Hinduism needs repair and 
repatching very badly in many places. 
But to talk of substituting Hinduism 
for Christ, of making Hinduism an 
‘ism’ in Christianity, is to blow quanti- 
ties of air into truth until someone, Miss 
Eleanor, comes along and pokes a perti- 
nent question into it: “What is Hindu- 
ism? 

“Mr. Gray, I take it that your “men 
downtown’ don’t know what Hinduism 
ie 

“T can’t say that they do,” answered 
Mr. Gray. “I should hate to take an 
examination myself.” 

“They are trying to be broad-minded 
—emphasis on broad and not on mind,” 
commented Mrs. Gray once more. 


Hunger for the Bread of Life 


“When I left the theological school,” 
said Fazl Masih, taking up the thread 
of his story once more, “I was sent to be 


Official members of a village church 


a Christian preacher and teacher in 
twelve villages along the Jumna River. 
I was going to my own people with the 
bread of life. To me they were already 
seated and hungrily awaiting the food 
for their starved condition. I had seen 
the Teacher break the bread, and he had 
filled the basket of my life full to over- 
flowing. I would go down the line 
passing the bread to eager hands and 
mouths. Alas! I found the multitudes, 
not seated in companies on the green 
grass, as in Galilee, but everywhere dis- 
tressed and scattered. Only here and 


INDIA is the spiritual mother of 
half mankind. That is her su- 
preme significance. That is her 
meaning, her importance, her fas- 
cination for the world to-day. 

Here is a nation to whom pain 
and privation simply do not count 
if a spiritual aim is to be realized.- 

That which makes one so wroth 
with Hinduism is that it has per- 
verted and turned to barrenness so 
rich a soil. 

India needs saving from its re- 
ligion not because it is all bad— 
far from it—but because it is 
mixed and can’t unmix itself. 

India’s spiritual history is the 
world’s tragedy of religion—a na- 
tion that for so many centuries 
has sought God with unmeasured 
sacrifice and is still unsatisfied. 

It is tragic that the religious soul 
of India, with its measureless ca- 
pacity for sacrifice and devotion, 
should be sterilized by the obses- 
sion of a single idea—the passion- 
ate longing for a merging in the 
Absolute, which is indistinguish- 
able from personal annihilation. 

Brahma (the Absolute) is a great, 
passionless lake, whose surface is 
unstirred by any desires, unruffled 
by any breath that comes from the 
world of men’s affairs.—The Goal 
of India, Holland. 


if 


‘effort. 


there I found one, two, or more ready 
to hear and to receive. What was the 
trouble? Hinduism had both fitted and 
unfitted them for what I had to tell 
them. Hinduism had created the 
hunger for bread but prejudiced them 
against the kind of bread I held in my 
hands. As slowly I overcame the preju- 
dice and the hunger alone gnawed at 
their hearts, they became ravenous 
for the ‘bread come down from Heaven,’ 
for the Christ as we see him in the Gos- 
pels and know him in our hearts.” 
“How did Hinduism prejudice them 
against you?” asked John. : 


Hindu Prejudice 


“In this way,” said Fazl Masih: 
“Hinduism is at heart conformity to 
caste rules. Hindus are divided into 
almost three thousand separate com- 
partments, and only in one’s own com- 
partment can one eat or drink or be 
married. Caste has much to say also 
regarding occupation and travel. It 
hampers freedom of movement and 
It is a divine institution, the 
product of the great universal law of 
cause and effect. It has all the sanc- 
tions of time and religion. Within the 
caste group it supports and helps a man 
but, at the same time, keeps him in that 
group. Each caste has all the privacy 
and prejudices of its own life—a garden 
with high walls, within which men live 
their intimate life. Now, Christianity 
breaks down the walls of partition, 
levels all the distinctions; which is to 
the Hindu against all reason, custom, 
and liking. It drives him out of his’ 
garden, breaks all the supports and as- 
surances of his life, sends him into a 
cold world, where he is to eat and marry 
indiscriminately, and where his life is 
to become common and unclean, and 


IV—The Christian Message in the Soil of Hinduism 


forever bars him from returning to his 
garden; for once out of the garden of 
caste, the flaming sword of caste rules 
makes return almost impossible.” 


The Unknowable 


“And there are other barriers. To 
the Hindu, God is ultimately unknow- 
able: “beyond the reach of thought and 
prayer, beyond personality and even 
morality. Of him nothing can be af- 
firmed except that He is. Not only that, 
but in the final analysis he alone is, he is 
all, everybody, everything. There are 
many gods in Hinduism, gods great and 
small, gods kind and cruel, gods more or 
less holy, and gods unholy. These are to 
be worshiped, feared, and even (some 
of them) loved. Yet they are all less 
than the Infinite, all belong to the 
temporary and changing universe, all 
are only manifestations, phases, of the 
great, universal All, to whom men can 
never reach, yet of which he too is a 

art.” 

“What a terribly deep idea! One 
can easily drown in it,” remarked 
Eleanor. “How can ignorant people 
think such thoughts?” 

“It lies in the background of their 
consciousness — the changing, unreal 
world. Every man passes from life to 
life, each life with its new body and new 
environment, driven by the wind of his 
past deeds. As he has done in the past 
so is he now. He sows and reaps con- 
stantly, and no one can break the suc- 
cession of cause and effect. Each act 
is a reaping of previous deeds, each act 
is a sowing of deeds to come. Caught 
in sorrow—unescapable sorrow (unes- 
capable because no one can break the 
links of this chain), sorrow he has made 
for himself in far-away, past existences, 
sorrow that creates sorrow for the mor- 
row and the day after,—he longs for 
release. 

“Release is the great hunger of the 
Hindu heart. 
seeks, he knocks at many doors. He 
tries release by knowledge (intuitive 
knowledge), he tries release by works 
(ceremonial works), he tries release by 
faith (devotion to God as personal and 
gracious). Hinduism is very tolerant 
as to doctrinal belief.” 


The Gospel and the Hindu 


“Now comes the Christian preacher, 
telling of God, who ‘so loved the world 
that he gave’-—a God personal, right- 
eous, loving. But behind him the 
Hindu still sees the Unknowable, who 
alone is real, and in whose reality all 
else becomes unreal. The Christian 
God is only the Hindu /shwar with an- 
other name. 


For release he asks, he - 


“Again, the Christian preacher tells 
of the Saviour, ‘that whosoever believeth 
on him should not perish. But how can 
any Saviour break the chain of cause 
and effect? The sorrows I suffer now 
I cannot escape. I have my own cross 
and carried it myself, myself drove the 
nails and set it up for my own torture 
and perishing. No ‘believing’ can shift 
crosses. Help fortthe future—yes. 
Help for the present—I cannot con- 
sistently believe in. 

“Again the Christian preacher tells 
of release: ‘but have eternal life. But it 
is not life that Hinduism seeks, but es- 
cape from life—not release from sin 
that cramps and blasts life, but escape 
from birth and action and rebirth, es- 
cape from the sorrows that necessarily 
attend all living. Sorrow has set all the 
chords of the Hindu heart into the minor 
keys. To cure sorrow he would bring 
life itself—life as it runs through count- 
less births—to an end. So different is 
the Christian release from the Hindu! 

“Yet listen, Mr. Gray. Hold the 
Hindu to the Christ healing sorrow, 
keep his gaze on that perfect one who 
came to share our sorrows (and while 
he shares to heal them), and the Hindu 
heart, breaking all barriers of his logic 
and long traditions, will fly to the 
Christ as steel to the magnet. Christ, 
the Man of sorrows, who came to release 
from sorrows, is irresistible to India. 
If Christian lives will not deny and give 
the lie to his words, when He stands and 
says to India, “The Spirit of the Lord 


. anointed me to preach good tidings 
to your poor, to proclaim release 
to your captives, to recover the sight 
of your blind, to set at liberty those 
among you that are bruised, and to 
proclaim a new and better period for 
your ancient land,’ India, prepared in a 
measure by her own religions, will not 
cast him from the brow of the hill but 
will rather, as is her way, cast herself 
at his feet in a paroxysm of loving de- 
votion, saying over and over, ‘My Lord 
and my God!’ ” 


Discussion Questions 
WHY IS HINDUISM at once the most 


intolerant and most tolerant of all re- 
ligions? 

In what respects is Hinduism fitted 
to Indian life and temperament? Has 
it made the most of the opportunity af- 
forded by this fact? 

What is the danger of ““broad-minded- 
ness” toward other religions than Chris- 
tianity? 

How does Hinduism unfit natives for 
the reception of Christianity? How do 
its adherents prejudice the natives 
against Christian missionaries? 

Show how Hinduism is a caste re- 
ligion. In this respect has it anything 
in common with Christianity? 

Name other barriers between Hin- 
duism and Christianity. 

What is the Hindu conception of 
God? How does this influence the 
thought and action of its adherents? 


Fundamental Conceptions of 


Hinduism 
GOD 
- The all-pervading essence of the 
universe 
THE WORLD 
Unreal; 
the visible, an illusion 
HUMAN LIFE 


by cessation from desire 


SALVATION 
Release from the chain 
of individual existence 


THE SOCIAL ORDER 
Stratified by caste; 
each man’s place unalterably 
fixed by birth 


THE PAST 
Irrevocable; must be 
expiated by man himself 


THE GOAL 
Identity with Brahma; 


Essentially evil; to be escaped 
Nirvana 


Christianity 
GOD 


The one eternal Father revealed 
in Jesus Christ 


THE WORLD . 
A battleground; 
the visible, a sacrament 


HUMAN LIFE 
Essentially good; an ever-increas- 
ing opportunity of loving service 


SALVATION 


Fogiveness of past sins and 
new life unto righteousness 


THE SOCIAL ORDER 
A brotherhood including all 
men as children of the one 
Father 


THE PAST 
Redeemed by the infinite 
sacrifice of divine love 


THE GOAL 
Communion with God; ‘‘the 
measure of. the stature of 
the fulness of Christ.’’ 


—The Renaissance in India, Andrews. 


The Mass Movement 


Scripture Reference: Matt. 14. 13-21 


MRS. GRAY begged us to stay for 
supper. The supper table was un- 
usually attractive with its fine linen, 
silver, and china. In the center rose a 
cut-glass vase filled with hybrid tea 
roses. The meal was simple but pre- 
pared with all the skill of a culinary 
artist. Fazl Masih, asking the blessing, 
took a hot roll from his side plate and, 
lifting his face in a prayer of gratitude, 
broke the roll in two pieces. Eleanor, 
slyly watching him, remembered the 
practice of the Teacher as recorded in 
the Gospels. 


Feasting 


“T have come a long way,” said Fazl 
Masih with some feeling “from the 
meager food of the outcaste to these 
daily feasts of Christian homes in 
America.” 

“This is no feast,” said Mrs. Gray 
in protest. “This is only a simple 
Sunday-evening supper.” 

“That is it,” replied the Indian. “In 
your plenty a feast has become a simple 
supper. Oh, how much you have! 
And this water—I never drank water 
such as this when I was a boy.” 

“Why, this is just plain water,” said 
Eleanor in surprise. Fazl Masih lifted 
his glass and looked at it. ‘“‘Never call 
this ‘just plain water’—so clear and 
cold. We draw from shallow wells and 
carry it long distances. Ours is just 
plain water, and not much of it at that. 
We are ever hungry and ever thirsty, 
and you never know hunger or thirst. 
Surely the Teacher has fulfilled his 
promise—that those who follow him 
and are called by his name shall never 
hunger or thirst. Christian America 
sits down to a feast of rich food and ot 
living water three times a day and 
oftener.” 

“But we have many hungry in our 
country,” said Mr. Gray. 

“Not in Christian homes, Mr. Gray,” 
replied Fazl Masih. ‘Where Christ 
goes in, hunger goes out. He 7s bread— 
he gives bread.” 


Slaves of Hunger 


“Body and soul, he feeds his own. Is 
not that the wonder of the Christ? 


Bread bread bread— 
the Gospels are full of bread, because 
he is come to feed men, For the sake 
of the loaves and fishes we all follow 
him: he satisfies our hunger. Hunger is 
all through us—hunger for knowledge, 
hunger for peace, hunger for joy, 
hunger for bread.” 

Suddenly he grew very sober and 
laid down his knife and fork. “Through 
India’s villages is going the rumor of a 
Bread Giver, and India’s villages are 
trampled by hunger. As a boy I never 
knew a full stomach. Hungry I grew 
up. Physical hunger—yes. Fifty mil- 
lion outcastes lorded over by hunger! 
Famine is chronic in my land. Not even 
simple Sunday suppers for fifty millions 
of us. Thin we grow; our bones pro- 
trude. We carry heavy loads and do 
hard work with legs and arms pitifully 
thin. Hunger goes to bed with us and 
wakes us in the night. We are all of 
us slaves of hunger. Hunger breaks 
our spirit and keeps us submissive— 
hunger for food, hunger for more and 
better things in life, hunger for that 
which fills the soul. We. may not 
express it in words, but it looks out of 
our eyes—every one of us. 


“Now to the world, nineteen centuries 
ago, came the Bread Giver. Many he 
fed, his disciples he fed, and he sent 
them out to feed: “Feed my sheep’ 
‘Feed my lambs.’ But with full stomachs 
you sat down, satisfied. Nineteen 
hundred years have passed, and India 
still waits in its villages, where ninety 
per cent of Indians live. 

HLet ramor hassitethaguehere are 
bread and better living in the world, 
that the name of Yishu (Jesus) 1s 
somehow connected with it, that even 
outcastes with that Name laid on their 
heads in baptism may without fear have 
some of it.” 


The Masses of India 


“So, Mr. Gray, the villages of India 
are stirring. A mighty host of out- 
castes and lowcastes is preparing for the 
exodus. They have no Moses, no Aaron, 
to lead them. In their caste groups 
they are assembling, and men, women, 
and children are beginning to gird them: 
selves for a strange journey out of their 
land of bondage. Their advance 
groups are already on the way. These 
have looked to Christianity first for 
help and guidance, and Christianity 


A baptismal service at Phapunda, India 


LS; 


has baptized hundreds of thousands of 
them.” 

“Are you speaking of the mass move- 
ment?” asked Mr. Gray. 

“Yes, *-said Faz] Masih’ “It is the 
proletariat of India moving out and up 
and giving Christianity the first chance 
of finding and determining their line of 
march. It is a phase of a universal 
movement in all lands—the lowly and 
the oppressed seeking better conditions 
for life and labor. It is a strange sight 
in India and one that thrills the blood; 
for India, in all its long history, has 
never seen mass movements on this 
order.” 


“Why has Christianity the first 
chance?” asked John. 
“Because,” answered Fazl Masih, 


“Christianity is to a great extent re- 
sponsible for the restlessness of these 
masses. Christianity is ever  pro- 
claiming a better life and better living. 
The brighter future is ever dangled 
before the unhappy present.  Chris- 
tianity, like a mother with candy, ever 
lures them on. Christianity encourages 
them to start and, having started, 
sympathizes with them and _ speaks 
kindly to them.” 


A Growing Movement 


“Are they really coming in masses?” 
asked Eleanor. 

“Yes, Miss Eleanor, a whole caste 
from this village, a whole caste from 
that,—all the representatives of some 
particular caste from a group of vil- 
lages. Whole regions, north and south, 
are distinctly affected. The movement 
is bound to grow.” 

“Fazl Masih,’—and Mrs. Gray’s 
face was sober—“‘they do not come with 
really Christian motives, do they? 
They are not thinking of their sins and 
fleeing from them; they are not asking 
for salvation, are they?” 

“No, Mrs. Gray, except in some in- 
stances. They are fleeing from a con- 
dition of bondage—social bondage, 
economic bondage, spiritual bondage. 
They do not fully comprehend just 
what they are fleeing from or fleeing to. 
They know they are moving out to 
something better. Would you thrust 
them back into bondage just because 
they do not speak in the language of 
prayer meetings and revival services? 
They are hungry in every department 
of their lives, and the Bread Giver can 
satisfy every hunger. Shall we keep 
them from the Christ because their re- 
quests are not always framed in terms 
of morality and religion? 

“Yet,” he continued, “you will be 
surprised to know that their most 
frequent requests are for Christian 
teachers and for protection from unjust 


V—The Mass Movement 


persecution that would disrupt their life 
and throw them into jail on false 


charges. They say to us: ‘In our line of - 


march give us guides and keep us from 
those who rob and beat us, and the rest 


THE PEOPLE are not allsaints, but 
neither are we. They come to us 
from mixed motives, I grant you. 
Yes, friends, their motives are 
mixed; but until you can stand in 
the shoes of a bare-footed Chamar 
or Bhangi, neither you nor I are in 
a position to sit in judgment. 
Were I a Bhangi, with all that goes 
with that, and with only the vista 
of a broom under my arm and a 
basket (with its contents) on my 
head, I would seek a way out and, 
seeing it, even were it by way of the 
church, I would go that way. 
Would not you? Were Ia Chamar, 
with nothing else to bequeath to 
posterity but the odium of ‘‘un- 
touchability’’ and the malodorous 
work over a tan pit in a village, and 
someone came along and told me 
of a way out, even were that via the 
church, I would go. Would not 
you? Yes, I would go, even if men 
that should know better stood 
crying, ‘‘Mixed motives!”’ 

After a study of these same 
mixed motives, extending over 
some years, I have come to the 
conclusion that they have three 
main ones: first, they want their 
children educated; second, they 
wanta social uplift; and, third, they 
want a religion. Now, not one of 
these motives in itself is bad. The 
man among us who would not 
strive, until he felt the pinch, that 
his sons and daughters should be 
well educated is not worthy of the 
parenthood that God has given 
him. Then, too, we all believe in 
a social uplift in the homelands for 
all who are down: then why not in 
this land? and why not by means of 
the church of Christ if a social 
uplift is good for a man? Those 
who know conditions as they are 
know that no son of an ‘‘untouch- 
able’ can get into the schools that 
now exist; not that there is any 
law against it, but that the sons of 
the ‘‘touchables’’ would see that 
no ‘“‘untouchable”’ getsin. If they 
are to be educated, it must be in 
special schools for them.—J. T. 
Robertson in the Indian Witness. 


[eae ry 


we shall do ourselves.’ Could you 
improve on these requests?” 

si edownot sknowsthatelecan, @aan= 
swered Mrs. Gray. 


Mr. Gray Objects 


“But I have a serious objection to all 
these mass movements,” suddenly put 
in Mr. Gray. “If the Christian church 
is as yet small in India and if it opens its 
doors to these ignorant village out- 
castes, will you not destroy your Chris- 
tian church—swamp it—with an over- 
load of superstition? Will they not 
render the church poor and feeble for a 

14 


i a 


long time to come? How can you havea 
strong church if you fill it with these 
folk? Does not Christianity become a 
thin veneeer covering a lot of paganism? 
I have read of such a condition in other 
lands, caused by overrapid Christian- 
ization. My program would be: build 
up a small, strong, intelligent, educated 
Christian community, a model to the 
Indian people, a true example of Chris- 
tian culture, a light shining in a dark 
place; and let these masses go for the 
present. Get them further on: fifty or 
a hundred years from now. Which 
will have benefited India more in 
the end—immediate response to and 
baptism of these moving millions of 
outcastes, thereby diluting your Chris- 
tian spirit and power at the very 
moment when India needs that spirit 
and power in full strength, or letting the 
movement go past you and overtaking 
it gradually and in time with Indian 
Christian leaders carefully trained and 
ready to handle the situation so that 
neither the literacy nor the purity of 
the Christian church shall suffer any 
shock or diminution? I am a business 
man, and to me it is poor business to 
herd this stampeding herd of dumb 
cattle—for that is really what they are 
—into the narrow and small pen of the 
Indian Christian Church. I know they 
are hungry and confused and eager for 
Christian teaching, but sentiment too 
often spoils the best strategy of a 
campaign. Let us, as Christ, limit our- 
selves in India to the smaller group— 
‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’— 
before we go to the uttermost. man in 
the uttermost part of the land. First in 
Jerusalem,- then in Judea, then in 
Samaria, and finally in the uttermost 
parts: it is the strategy of Jesus and 
wise in every respect. In other words, 
Fazl Masih, hard-hearted as I may seem, 
it is folly and ruin to try to make Chris- 
tians in masses. Let the mass move- 
ment work itself out in its own way. 
Pick a few stragglers or individuals— 
as yourself—from the line of march, 
train them in your Christian institu- 
tions, and send them back as Moseses 
and Aarons to lead their own people as 
best they can in their own way. I am 
certain it is the wiser policy.” 

Mr. Gray did seem convinced, and 
his conviction registered itself in the 
ringing of the carving knife upon the 
steel as he prepared to carve the cold 
roast beef. 


Shall the Door Be Shut? 


Eleanor and John looked eagerly to 
Faz] Masih to get his answer. It came 
without long delay: 

“Mr. Gray, there is much, very much 
in what you say. The literacy of the 


Indian Christian Church has already 
been very seriously, even dangerously, 
lowered by the influx of outcastes, in- 
adequately prepared and trained. In 
our own church sixty thousand baptized 
boys and girls are without any provision 
for education. The Indian Christian 
Church often resents this flooding of 
its life on the part of overzealous mis- 
sionaries and Indian agents in the mis- 
sionaries’ employ, by superstitious and 
poverty-stricken masses. It may be, 
humanly speaking, better strategy to go 
more slowly, yet they are human lives 
and of infinite value accordingly. Who 
inquires into the education and social 
position of men and.women caught in a 
burning building and crying for help? 
Does not every American city count 
one life as valuable as any other life and 
make provision for rescue and assistance 
on that basis? 

“And then, Mr. Gray, is it not the 
very spirit of Christ—and, therefore, 
of true Christianity—to refuse help to 
no one? To refuse help is by that very 
act to deny the common fatherhood of 
God, the brotherhood of man, and the 
universality of the kingdom of God. 
Jesus was not sent only ‘to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel,’ but the 
other sheep, who ‘are not of this fold,’ 
were his also. The little dogs may eat 
the crumbs that fall from the children’s 
table; the Samaritan and the Greek who 
seek him do find him; the men of 
Cornelius, who knock at the house of 
Simon the tanner for one Simon Peter, 
do find and get him; the man of Mace- 
donia does upset Paul’s strategic tour 
through Asia Minor. Christianity, by 
its very spirit and fundamental proposi- 
tion, is never quite able to shut the door 
of good strategy On a mass movement 
pressing toward Christ. It is never 
quite able to keep the multitudes from 
thronging him and receiving his healing 
touch.” 


Breaking the Caste System 


“More than that, Mr. Gray, I am not 
convinced that it is better strategy to 
let the mass movement sweep past us 
into some phase of reformed Hinduism 
or into Islam and not meet it head-on 
with the Christian deputations and 
agents of welcome; not merely because 
it will be more difficult to reach them 
as Hindus, accepted from outcastehood 
into lowcastehood, or as Moslems, than 
it is now to reach them as outcastes, but 
of much greater significance is this: that 
the mass movement, met and by 
enormous efforts turned into an edu- 
cated and vital Christian community, 
would do more to break and stultify the 
caste system (which is not only the 


V—The Mass Movement 


Chaudri telling his experience at a meeting of lay readers at Meerut, India 


body but the soul of Hinduism as well) ° 


than any other possible thing that 
might happen. Caste holds us up— 
the Hindenburg Line of Hinduism. 
Caste implies social distinction, re- 
ligious heritage, and, to some extent, 
intellectual training. To take whole 
castes of outcastes—just as they come 
to us—and render them in body, mind, 
and soul the equals of highcastes and 
put their feet on equal levels of achieve- 
ment would render the whole of 
Hinduism an Alice’s Wonderland, where 
sense and reason no longer prevail. The 
last would become first, and the first 
would be no longer first; which is what 
usually happens in Jesus’ Wonderland 
—or, as he calls it, his kingdom of 
heaven on earth. In this way, more 
quickly than any other, shall we over- 
come the old and make the new triumph 
in India. The mass movement, in 
other words, is the long crowbar by 
which the caste system of India may be 
toppled from its secure and age-long 
foundations. Shall we refuse to take 
hold when God and the Christ are 
thrusting it into our hands?” 


Outcastes as Christians 


“Can these outcastes be made into 
real Christians, into living churches 
that will not disgrace the name of 
Christian?” asked John. 

LUbat isp amlone estory, ecsalds Laz. 
Masih, “‘and our hostess has folded her 

15 


napkin. It happens that I am going 
to speak to the young people to-night 
in the church on that very subject— 
n ‘The Indian Christian Church.’ ” 

“Why can’t we all go?” asked Mr. 
Gray. 

“We can,” 
enthusiasm. 


answered Mrs. Gray with 


Discussion Questions 


WHAT IS the mass movement? 

Is it inspired by a desire for physical 
nourishment? 

Does it involve a yearning for spirit- 
ual as well as material refreshment? 

How does India respond to the appeal 
of the great Bread Giver? 

To what social class do persons in the 


‘mass movement generally belong? 


What does Christianity do for them? 

Has the movement reached its apex? 

Is Mr. Gray’s objection to respond- 
ing to the mass movement a yalid one? 
Why or why not? 

Is it enough to “pick a few stragglers 
from the line of march” and give them 
a Christian education and the oppor- 
tunities of civilization? What is Fazl 
Masih’s reply to Mr. Gray’s argument? 

What is the Scriptural answer to the 
plea that Jesus was sent only “to the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel’’? 

In what sense is Christianity in 
India like a crowbar? 

Can caste in India be destroyed? 


VI 


The Indian Christian Church 


Scripture References: John 13. 12-17; Acts 11. 15-18 


WHEN FAZL MASIH spoke | that 
night in the main auditorium of the 
church, the service was unique. It 
was in charge of the young people. 
With characteristic energy and ingenu- 
ity they had decorated the church to 
represent India. Striking pictures of 
India were on the walls, the pulpit had 
been removed, and the platform taste- 
fully arranged with palms and mari- 
golds (the so-called African variety 
that is so common in India), and 
Oriental rugs and cushions.  Fazl 
Masih was dressed in Indian costume 
and wore a garland of marigolds about 
his neck. With his help the service had 


been planned. 
A Significant Pageant 


To show the proportion of adherents 
of each religion in India, as the organ 
ceased playing, in came forty-eight 
young men and women under a banner 
marked Hinduism and singing in 
English, to its own Indian tune, a song 
in praise of Vishnu, the god of light and 
grace. They passed into the vacant 
seats reserved for the young people. 
They were followed by thirteen carry- 
ing the standard of Islam (Moham- 
medanism). These chanted the great 
“verse of the throne” from the Koran, 
where Allah is “high and lifted up.” 
Then came two primitive animists, 
looking about in fear and _ intoning 
magical formule that protect from evil 
spirits. Finally, after a pause, came a 
lone bearer of a cross, singing “Jesus 
Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” and 
taking his place in the middle of the 
other groups. As he reached his seat 
he ceased singing, and immediately 
the same great hymn was taken up 


AT ONE EXTREME in the Indian 
Church are the educated leaders, 
whose capacity seems equal to that 
of the ablest foreign missionaries, 
and whose claim to have a voice in 
the evangelization of India is fully 
justified. At the other extreme, 
and vastly preponderating in num- 
bers, are the simple and unde- 
veloped congregations drawn from 
the depressed classes. Owing to 
their poverty and ignorance they 
cannot bear heavy responsibilities. 
Their place of Christian worship 
may be a mud-walled building, 
larger and better built than their 
own village houses; or it may be 
merely a raised, level, shaded place 
for prayer out in the open. Such 
congregations will naturally re- 
quire a great deal of training, nur- 
ture, and discipline before they can 
be built up into useful citizens and 
can take an adequate place in the 
life of the church and the nation. 
—D. J. Fleming in Building With 
India. 


from inside the vestry. Low it’sounded 
at first, then increased in strength. 
Soon the vestry door opened, and Fazl 
Masih stepped forth. He made his 
way to the place prepared for him, 
finished the song (singing in Hindi), 
then lifted his face in prayer. Not a 
person there but was stirred as the 
Indian talked to the Christ—as if he 
saw him and would share with him all 
that was light and heavy in his heart. 


The Leaven at Work 


Then he arose to speak. His theme 
was “The One in the Sixty-One’— 
the Indian Christian Church embedded 
in the life of non-Christian peoples. 
It was the small amount of leaven hid 
in the “three measures” of meal. The 


The Hindustani Church in Naini Tal, India 


16 


non-Christians—more than three hun- 
dred millions of them—constituted a 
great handicap, a great responsibility, 
and a great opportunity for the five 
million Christians. 

The Christians were divided into 
many churches and sects and as yet had 
not achieved, except on a small scale, 
the power that comes from a conscious- 
ness of unity. Their non-Christian 
neighbors and relatives were constantly 
dragging down, as by some _ hidden 
natural force of gravitation, the Chris- 
tian morale to the level of the common 
life of India. It was a constant struggle 
to keep the purity of the Christian 
spirit and practice unimpaired by non- 
Christian associations. 

Caste within the church furnished an 
enormous problem; for the spirit of 
caste is never cast forth merely by the 
application of baptismal water. The 
caste spirit is for India its anti-Christ. 
Many a -prosperous Christian com- 
munity in the long centuries since the 
Christian preachers and teachers first 
came to India, beginning with Thomas 
himself, that disciple of Jesus whose 
surname was Didymus, has _ been 
rendered eftete and innocuous, as far 
as its task to non-Christians was con- 
cerned, by this spirit of caste. Caste 
causes an Indian Christian church to 
decay at the heart—the core, the 
center. 


An Invisible Process 


The non-Christian peoples not only 
are a handicap and a source of in- 
fection but, far more, and more posi- 
tively, are the responsibility and the 
opportunity of the Indian Christian 
Church. A vital Indian Christianity 
will assume the responsibility and press 
forward along all lines of opportunity. 
No active leaven will fear the three 
measures of meal; with every atom of 
leaven active the meal is, by God’s own 
natural laws, doomed to leavening. 
The process is not visible to any large 
extent; invisibly the forces of Chris- 
tianity are exerting their greatest in- 
fluence and power. No man in India 
can say, “Lo here! Lo there!” for the 
kingdom of Christ comes chiefly with- 
out observation. Like white ants that 
grind out with their small, powerful 
jaws the interior of a structure before 
much sign is given on the outside of 
their destructive presence, so the in- 
fluences of the Christ are eating out the 
hearts of the great social and religious 
systems of India. And the Indian 


e 


Christian Church is, of course, called 
upon to furnish the agents and the 
proof of this power of Christ. The 
Indian Christian Church must speed up, 
and not delay the process. 

To do so the Indian Christian Church 
must discipline itself, bring together all 
its branches into closer and more com- 
pact form, have far more control over 
its own affairs than in the past, and give 
the supreme place in its life not to 
organization but to communion with 


the living Christ. 
| A Self-Imposed Discipline 


Then Fazl Masih stopped and drew 
from his pocket a recent letter that told 
of the self-imposed discipline of a little 
village community of Christians in one 
of the new mass-movement . areas. 
Unable to write their names, they had 
given their thumb-mark signatures to 
the following decisions: 

“1. Observance of the Sabbath—We 
will attend worship both morning and 
evening. If we are prevented from 
doing so by causes beyond our control 
we will inform the evangelist of our 
village. If we absent outselves for no 
satisfactory reason we agree to be fined 
four annas. We also agree to do as 
little work as possible on the Lord’s 
Day. 

“9, Total abstinence—We agree to 
abstain from toddy, arrack, and other 
intoxicating drinks, or, if any member 
of our families indulges in the use of 
them, we agree to the imposition of a 
fine of Rs. 5 for each individual. 

“3. From eating forbidden things.— 
We agree to abstain from eating the 
flesh of animals that have died of them- 
selves, the flesh of animals offered as 
sacrifices to idols, and all fruit that has 
been so offered. A breach of this rule 
will involve each offender in a fine of 
Rs... 

“4. Each must be ready to perform any 
necessary work connected with the church. 
If any member refuses to come when 
called, we agree that a fine of eight 
annas be imposed. 

“s. All disputes that arise among 
members of the church shall be heard and 
settled by the church court. Those who 
break this rule shall be dealt with as the 
church court decides. 

“6. No Christian shall take part in 
Hindu festivals or give any assistance 
therein; they shall not contribute any 
of their cattle or any other things to 
help such festivals. Any breach of this 
rule shall be punished according to the 
decision of the church court. 

“7, All children of a schoolgoing age 
shall be sent regularly to school. ‘Those 
who keep their children from school 


VI—The Indian Christian Church 


WHILE WE HAVE BEEN BUSY 
with the children, the adults have 
one by one been quietly coming in 
and seating themselves on the 
floor, the men on one side, and the 
women on the other; and soon we 
are ready to begin the service. 


Praise, prayer, and preaching— 
these are essentially the same in the 
pariah’s shed or the Gothic cathe- 


dral; but the external features of — 


our service appear strange to the 
visitor. Not only are the language 
and the music Indian, but the 
whole of the worship has been so 
simplified as to bring it within the 
range of the understanding of the 
worshipers—those babes in re- 
ligious experience. The sermon, 
for example, is more a kindergarten 
Scripture lesson than a discourse. 
Its subject is laid down in the 
mission syllabus, which is ar- 
ranged so as to give the hearers a 
regular graded course of instruc- 
tion in the life of Christ and in 
certain other portions of the Bible. 
We begin by asking the congre- 
gation what was the subject of last 
week’s lesson; there is an awkward 
pause until some brilliant person 
recollects it, whereupon we link 
to-day’s subject with it. Suppos- 
ing that to-day’s subject is a par- 
able, we tell the story with question 
and answer and much repetition, 
not hesitating to rebuke by name 
individuals whose attention wan- 
ders or to waken others who are 
overtaken by slumber. As _ the 
people live constantly in the open 
air, doing hard manual work, they 
are naturally liable to fall asleep 
when they sit still, so that often 
someone has to be waked up during 
a service. We reach the point in 


the lessons at which the text must 


be introduced, and make the whole 
congregation repeat it after us 
fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five 
times. Then we point the plain 
moral of the story, and it is one of 
the privileges of doing mission 
work to find how those words, 
spoken to Jews so long ago, are 
marvelously adapted to the cir- 
cumstances of an Indian village 
to-day. 

So ends the sermon, which is 
followed by the collection, con- 
sisting mainly of little offerings of 
grain saved from each family’s 
meals during the week. The house- 
wife has a special little basket for 


‘the purpose, into which, at cook- 


ing time, she places, when she can 
spare it, a handful of grain; and 
the whole basket is brought on 
Sunday to church for the collec- 
tion. The congregation’s total 
amount of grain is thus put to- 
gether and ultimately sold by 
auction for church expenses. After 
the benediction we mark the 
register, for in most village congre- 
gations of this type the attendance 
at church services is carefully 
recorded. We ask why Mary has 
been away for three weeks, and why 
for the last six months Methu- 
selah’s attendance at Christian 
worship has: been so intermittent. 
We ask many impertinent ques- 
tions about the life and conduct of 
various individuals and _ scatter 
plentiful words of exhortation. In 
fact, recognizing that we have to 
do with children in _ spiritual 
things, we treat them as such, 
looking forward all the time to the 
day when they will grow up and 
cease to need our constant paternal 
supervision.— Godfrey R. Phillips 
in The Outcastes’ Hope. 


without satisfactory reasons shall be 
fined one anna for each child absent. 

“8. Every three or six months the 
members of the church court shall be 
changed. The evangelist of each place 
shall be present at all inquiries that are 
made under each rule. 

“9, All fines shall be devoted to the 
work of the church. 

“to, No one shall have authority to 
excommunicate from the church except 
the Indian minister and the superin- 
tendent missionary.” 


AS THE FIRST APOSTLE of the 
Gentiles declares more than once, 
where Christ is all in all, ‘‘there 
cannot be Greek and Jew [the 
caste that springs from race], cir- 
cumcision and uncircumcision [the 
caste that rests on forms of wor- 
ship], barbarian, Scythian [the 
caste of culture], bondman, free- 
man [the caste of social position]; 
for ye all are one man in Christ 
Jesus’’ (Col. 3. 11; Gal. 3. 28).— 
Graves Lectures on Missions, Hill. 


IG 


Weakness and Strength 


“T was in that church,” said the 
speaker, “and know something of its 
works and its patience, its tribulation 
and its poverty, its love and faith and 
ministry—are not these the words used 
of the seven churches of Asia in Revela- 
tion? This little Indian village church 
and many like it have their candle- 
sticks secure. Of course, there is much 
that might be said against them. ‘I 
have this against thee’ is spoken of five 
of the seven, and the proportion still 
holds in India—and in America too, for 
that matter. There is relapse into the 
old custom, especially at weddings and 
funeral feasts; there is the chill of a low 
ethical and spiritual pulse; there is a 
continuous and distracting fight with 
starvation and cold and disease; there 
is the darkness of ignorance and il- 
literacy (no pillar of fire by night or 
cloud by day but, rather, the reverse: 
the clouds by night and the pillars of 
fire by day); there is the numbing ac- 
quiescence in propagation of the Chris- 


’ INDIA, CEYLON AND 
AFGHANISTAN 


HINDU POPULATION 


“~s (1911 CENSUS) 
¢’ INDIA, CEYLON AND 
AFGHANISTAN 


_o>~“t, BUDDHIST POPULATION 
"4 fener (gil CENSUS) 
¢’ INDIA, CEYLON AND 
AFGHANISTAN 


From the World Survey 


The 1911 census showed approximately 5,000,000 Christians as compared with 234,000,000 Hindus and 71,000,000 Buddhists 


tian faith by missionaries and paid 
agents rather than self-propagation. 
To all these our village churches would 
plead guilty and throw themselves on 
the mercy of the court. Yet’—and here 
Fazl Masih’s eyes burned with light— 
Vl haves seen sthenmam them utcs sor 
persecution, whence they come forth 
purified, not denying their Lord by 
word or act; I have seen them in their 
poverty bring in their flour and grain 
and cloth and eggs and chickens and 
goats and calves and rings (finger rings, 
nose rings, earrings) and anklets and lay 
them joyfully with the Christian offer- 
ings. I have seen them sing their songs 
of gladness until the veins in their 
foreheads swelled to bursting, and their 
mouths were stretched by the sing- 
ing. I have seen their hospitality— 
golden hospitality—woven out of the 
threads of poverty; and their care of the 
sick and the bereaved. I have seen 
them coming into the Christian mela 
(fair) with drums and cymbals and 
banners saying proudly, “We are Isai’ 
(Jesus folk); I have heard their simple 
prayers, full of the imagery of their 
daily lives, of swooping hawks and 
little chicks, of washermen standing in 
the river cleaning dirty clothes, of 
patient oxen pulling the huge leather 
bags filled with water out of the shallow 
wells,—and in answer the Holy Spirit 
came settling down upon them. as some 
dove of peace or fire that burns. (Do 
you remember how Peter defended 
himself: “The Holy Spirit fell on them, 
even as on us’?) I have seen hundreds 
of their young men and women go out 
of the village life into training schools, 
and out of these again to become the 
paid evangelists and pastor-teachers of 
their own people. I have seen the zeal 
and heard the wisdom of these babes in 
Christ and know that from ‘the mouth 
of babes and sucklings’ praise is brought 
to its perfect expression. In a word, 
the Christian Church in the villages of 
India is being built out of the lives of the 
plainest sort of men and women. Sun- 


baked clay bricks they are rather than 


stones; yet, with the Christ as the head 
of their corner, as that which gives their 
lives their true relationships and mean- 
ings, even a sun-baked-brick structure 
may become a place for the praise of 
God and for the blessing of men.” 


A Nationalistic Church 


“But if you pass to the cities where 
Indian Christianity is really strongest 
and most developed—where there are 
real churches and schools and Christian 
institutions—you will see perhaps more 
clearly the Indian Church that is to be. 
City Christianity is to-day intensely 
and increasingly nationalistic. It will 
henceforth add to rather than subtract 
from the indigenous elements in its life. 
Things that are Indian and may be 


safely made Christian will be preserved. 


The whole past of India is pouring its 
pent-up waters into the Indian Church. 
The flood may be dangerous in certain 
respects, yet floods in India always 
enrich the soil by leaving their silt. 
The Indian will no longer apologize for 
the past but take pride in much of it. 
The Indian Christian Church will make 
its connections with India’s past, 
attach itself to the movements of the 
ages, bring a new power and force into 
the ordered lives of an ancient people, 
see the Christ in Indian dress speaking 
Indian tongues, worship in churches 
that are Indian in appearance and not 
poor imitations of this church, use an 
Indian Christian ritual and order of 
service (perhaps garland its preachers, 
as you have done, and do away with the 
pulpit, with the standing to preach in- 
stead of sitting on the floor to teach), 
elect all its own officers and admin- 
istrators, control its own finances, 
put much more emphasis on meditation 
and mystic communion, more emphasis 
on congregational singing with noisy 
instruments (drum and cymbal), and 
play a larger part in all the political and 
national life of India. So shall any 
Indian entering a Christian church feel 
himself still in India, and not in some 
strange land half-Indian, half-foreign. 
18 


“When will this come?” asked Fazl 
Masih. “When sufficient Indian leader- 
ship is developed to ‘take over’ from 
the missionaries, who in God’s provi- 
dence have dug foundations, laid the 
first stones, and started the building 
well on its way. We rejoice in them 
and what they have accomplished; we 
would have them rejoice in us as the 
responsibility for building the Indian 
Church falls increasingly on our hearts 
and hands.” 

When Fazl Masih ceased speaking, 
the organ again took up the hymn 
“Jesus Shall Reign.” This time all 


‘sang, even. the forty-eight and the 


thirteen, as, on the last stanza, they 
marched out 1n one dense column under 
the banner of the cross. 


Discussion Questions 


IN WHAT RESPECTS is the Indian 
Christian Church like a little leaven hid 
in three measures of meal (Luke 13. 21)? 


Are the Christians in India unified? 

To what extent is their morale broken 
down by non-Christian associations? 

What is the outstanding problem of 
the Christian Church in India? 

How does caste militate against the 
native churches? 


What do you think of the self- 
imposed discipline quoted by Fazl 
Masih? Compare it with the “rules” 
of our own church. 

Name some weaknesses of the Indian 
Christian churches. Do similar weak- 
nesses prevail in American churches? 


Name some of the admirable qualities 
of the Christians in India. Can we 
match them in this country? 


Where is the Indian Christian Church 
strongest? 

What is the present tendency in these 
churches? 
F Do you think it well that the Indian 
Church should take pride in developing 
its Own customs and ideas of church 
life and work? Why or why not? 


VII 


Indian Christian Leadership 


Scripture References: Luke 6. 12-19; Acts 1. 6-14 


THAT NIGHT after the service the 
young people thronged around Fazl 
Masih, most eager to see and hear more. 
He was to them an object of intense 
curiosity and admiration. They had 
heard much of missions, but it was all 
vague and unreal. Here, however, was 
the missionary enterprise on legs and 
alive. The poor janitor, hat on, stand- 
ing impatiently at the switchboard, 
began to turn off the lights one by one. 
A wild scramble ensued which landed 
the young people outside the building. 
The full moon was shining. 

“Let’s all see him home,” shouted one. 
The rest shouted approval. 

“That would be a long walk,” 
laughed Fazl Masih. “This full moon 
would go and another take its place 
before home appeared even though we 
traveled by fastest trains and steamers. 
Yet”—his voice saddened—“‘I have no 
home even there. My father and 
mother are dead. I am unmarried. 
Like the Teacher I am homeless; like 
him every home that receives me be- 
comes my home. You were right: 
you may see me home to-night.” 


What the Moon Saw 


As we passed the public park, gayly 
chattering, he spoke again: 

“Why not sit down here on these 
benches in this beautiful moonlit place? 
Here let us talk ourselves out.” 

Never was there a suggestion more 
enthusiastically recetved. Those of us 
who were there that night have a new 


idea of what this world is to be when 
the fellowships between men of differ- 
ent races are perfected in Christian un- 
derstanding and appreciation. The 
round moon, which for so many ages 
has looked on men of all races sundered 
and kept apart by ignorance and 
prejudice, a whole world of shadows, 
saw that night the new India and the 
new America strangely interesting and 
strangely sympathetic one to the other. 

Of course, the conversation soon 
turned to what all young people are 
most interested in—the investment of 
life and the dividends accruing from 
such investment. “Leadership” is often 
used as another name for this science of 
life investment, and it was of leadership 


that Faz] Masih spoke. 
Leaders and the Led 


“Did you ever think,” said Fazl 
Masih, looking up at the moon which 
filled his eyes with light, “that no man 
ever leads who does not follow? Leader- 
ship means not only that you are a 
leader but that you follow a leader. 
Leadership is always a game of tag— 
you are chasing one while another 
chases you. That one you chase may 
be a person or a purpose or ambition 
to which you are utterly committed— 
body, mind, and spirit, or, rather, in 
your time and energy. If there is no 
such person or ambition that you follow 
ardently, persistently, then none will 
follow you, and there is no leadership. 
Life’s tag becomes then a mere blind- 


man’s buff, which the Teacher perhaps 
had in mind when he spoke of ‘blind 
leaders of the blind.’”’ 

“But what has all this to do with 
India?” asked Eleanor, who was in the 
group that sat nearest to him. 

“Everything, Miss Eleanor,” an- 
swered Fazl Masih. “It is the whole 
problem of Indian Christian leader- 
ship, as it is of American Christian 
leadership. ‘What are the leaders 
following?’—though it sounds like— 
what do you call it? an Irish bull?— 
is really the most important question 
that can be asked—much more im- 
portant than ‘Whom are the leaders 
leading?’ For, you see, “Whom are the 
leaders following?’ determines the direc- 
tion of the running—whether toward 
the ditch or toward the open spaces of 
the park.” 

He stopped and we all were silent with 
him. When he spoke again, it was of 
India: 


India on the March 


“India is talking to-night of leader- 
ship just as we are. Our Indian Chris- 
tian Church talks much about it. We 
use such words as ‘self-government,’ 
‘autonomy,’ ‘self-determination,’ “free- 
dom’; but what we really mean is the 
privilege of leading our own people 
rather than having them follow English- 
men, Americans, foreigners. It is of 
course the would-be leaders who are 
talking it, not the people who are being 
led and are to continue to be led. 


LET US TAKE FIRST one whom I 
shall not hesitate to describe as 
the greatest Indian Christian of 


this generation. I mean Pandita 
Ramabai. Her history is, I think, 
at once an extraordinary revela- 
tion of the passion and the impo- 
tence of Hinduism, of the depth 
and riches of the Indian soul, and, 
supremely, of the power of Christ. 
In the long, toilsome, fruitless 
pilgrimages of her parents and her- 
self, their sufferings from famine, 
cold, and weariness, borne in the 
hope of an unseen good; in her 
mental labors, no less arduous, her 
study of the gropings after truth of 
her people’s ancient sages; in her 
devotion and in her learning 
Pandita Ramabai was and is the 
fine flower of India’s quest for God. 
And she is no less so when her 
seeking has been crowned by find- 
ing. The same passion that drove 
her and her parents, as it drives so 
many, with hungry hearts across 
the plains of India—from the 


FS 


frozen sources of the sacred rivers 
to the hot, fever-haunted swamps 
of the farthest south—the same 
passion, no longer now athirst for 
itself alone but for others whose 
thirst is not, as hers is, satisfied, 
glows and burns within her still. 
The love of Christ constraineth her. 
If we desire any reassurance as to 
what the Indian soul is capable of 
when possessed by Christ we have 
but to look at Pandita Ramabai— 
not mainly at what she has done in 
her great home at Mukti, much as 
that has been, but at what she 
is. 
There have always been those in 
the Christian church in all lands 
and in all times whom the vision 
of the unseen has made blind to 
the things of time. They have al- 
ways been in the church and they 
will, we believe, be found especially 
in days to come within the Indian 
Church. There will be those who 
will be ready to count the world 
well lost for the sake of spiritual 


19 


gain, for whom the things of eter- 
nity are so overwhelmingly real 
that the things of time matter 
nothing at all. For these men and 
women are not citizens of a state 
or members of a nation but simply 
souls for whom Christ died. Pan- 
dita Ramabai is of that company. 
She has not been denationalized 
by any influence from the West. 
Her desires are set upon other 
things; her citizenship is in heaven. 
She is, I think we may say, Indian 
in every fiber of her being, and 
none the less so because racial or 
national or personal claims mean 
nothing at all to her beside the 
claims of God and of the things of 
the spirit. She is ‘‘an apostle, not 
from men, neither through man.”’ 
Methodism has perhaps influenced 
her theology, but God and India 
have made her the great, humble, 
devoted servant of Christ that, 
first and last, she is.—Nicol Mac- 
nicolin the International Review of 
Missions. 


VII—Indian Christian Leadership 


The Rev. J. R. Chitambar and family. Mr. Chitambar was recently elected principal of 
Lucknow Christian College 


“And what a time to talk of leader- 
ship when India is on the march! 
Peoples, like people; nations, like in- 
dividuals, have their periods of mi- 
gration. They leave the old landmarks 
behind and set out to lay new ones. 
Whole nations, peoples, races, changing 
their manner of life in one generation— 
it is a marvelous sight and it is taking 
place in every continent to-day. The 
human race itself is on the march, 
moving no man knows whither. Some 
nations, like Russia, have pushed too 
far and too fast and have left their 
dying and dead pitilessly along their 
route of march. India, in spite of its 
great numbers, is well under way. And 
when these great periods of migration 
come, then it is that strong men are 
given such opportunities for leadership 
and control as are offered only seldom 
and to few, such opportunities as men 
of all centuries covet but cannot know. 
The Teacher came, you remember, in 
such an age. To his followers, who 
were being given this opportunity of 
leadership, he spoke these words: 
“Blessed are your eyes, for they see; 
and your ears, for they hear. For 
verily I say unto you, that many 
prophets and righteous men desired to 
see the things which ye see, and saw 
them not; and to hear the things which 
ye hear, and heard them not.’ To-day 
the Teacher once more is speaking in 
every continent these very words, and 
our young Indian Christians, of trained 
mind and some experience, are mightily 
stirred. They are no longer willing to 
be the ‘noncoms’—the noncommis- 
sioned officers—in the Christian armies 


.made it. 


but would march in front and give the 
words of command.” 
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked John. 
“Why not?” chimed in the rest. 


Our Investment in India 


Faz] Masih laughed. “You are all of 
you Americans, sure enough, brought 
up on the traditions and principles of 
liberty. You even carry the word on 
your coins along with ‘God’ and ‘na- 
tion.” Liberty! Theoretically, yes. 
Indian Christians should lead the Indian 
Church in this day and—let me whisper 


it—wi/l. But practically it is not so 
easy. It is a very difficult adjustment 
to make.” 

“Why? asked John. “It looks 


simple to me. The Indian Church 
wants this or that: let them have it!” 

“John, the Indian Church is not its 
Own; it represents the investments of 
others. American, British, German, 
Scandinavian Christians have put their 
men and money and prayers and efforts 
into it, and to a great extent it is to-day 
what they, working through their mis- 
sionaries and mission boards, have 
We have not built our own 
churches or schools or colleges or 
hospitals or printing presses; for the 
most part they have been built for us 
and represent millions of dollars and 
tens of thousands of lives freely given. 
Nor do we in most places support our 
own pastors and teachers. We do what 
we can, and the ‘mission’ makes up the 
rest. Now, all this investment is at 


stake in any transfer of authority from’ 


the- missionaries and the mission to 
Indian leaders and the Indian Church. 
20 


“And remember,” he went on, “we 
Indians have not been trained for 
centuries, as have you, in matters of 
administration. We have no special 
talent for that. Control by majorities 
or by representatives of the majority is 
a new thing-in the East, which has 
known for centuries only one-man 
control—one man surrounded by a 
favored group. What happened in 
Russia may very easily happen in 
India—even in the Indian Christian 
Church—namely, disintegration of all 
organization on a large scale. What 
then would become of your investment? 

“I am being perfectly frank, you see. 
Nor are we certain to preserve the 
Christian doctrines you have implanted 
in our lives. We are given to much 
thinking along the lines of the nature of 
God, the whence and whither of life, the 
achievement of salvation; and by the 
constant bending of centuries our 
thoughts go easily in directions strange 
to your ways of thinking. You start us 
along a road that to your judgment and 
experience is perfectly safe, and we get 
off that road on to strange roads, which 
to your thinking lead to the lands of 
falsehood and error. Then what be- 
comes of your investment? 

“And then, again, the wolves of caste 
may any day overwhelm the Indian 
Christian Church if the missionary 
shepherds are weakened in their author- 
ity over us or withdrawn in any num- 
bers. We have been too much com- 
mitted to caste in the past easily to 
deny or to defy it. The spirit of caste is 
everywhere i in the air, and we breathe 
it into our lungs as easily as you 
breathe the spirit of enterprise in this 
country. Caste is a poison gas to the 
Christian life. It burns out its lungs 
and numbs its heartbeats. How can 
our Indian leaders control the at- 
mosphere and keep the church breathing 
the fresh clean air of perfect brother- 
hood? With caste reducing the Indian 
Church to cliques what becomes of your 
investment of life and effort and prayer 
and money? Have you toiled and 
sacrificed just to set up the spirit of 
Antichrist in Christian churches in 
India?” 


An Adolescent Church 


Eleanor it was who spoke. 

“Then, Fazl Masih, perhaps it is 
better for the Indians to wait and let the 
missionaries have their way a little 
longer. You know what birdie and baby 
said and the answer they got: 


“ “Baby says, like little birdie, 
“Let me rise and fly away.” 
“Baby sleep a little longer 
Till the little limbs are stronger. 


If she sleeps a little longer, 
Baby too shall fly away.”’” 


It was almost too much for Fazl 
Masih, who laughed heartily. 

“Miss Eleanor, you should serve on 
all the committees that are now making 
the readjustments to keep them laugh- 
ing. Mother Goose zs 

“That is Lord Tennyson,” Eleanor 
corrected. 

“Well, Mother Goose and Lord 
Tennyson and all others who wrote for 
children are marvelous correctives for 
overstrain of mind and temper. That 
is one reason why the Teacher loved the 
children’s singing in the Temple and 
why he took children in his arms: they 
eased the tension of his high-strung life. 

“To go back, Miss Eleanor, I am 
afraid the birdie-baby answer is no 
longer possible. The Indian Church is 
not an infant but an adolescent. The 
Indians are set on control and they w// 
control and they should control. The 
transfer from the mission to the church, 
from the missionaries to the Indian 
leaders, is not far off. In fact, it has 
begun. Nothing can prevent it now. 
What we must strive for is to make it 
safe. All our energies must be bent to 
save us from disaster as Indian leaders 
come increasingly into positions of 
power and authority.” 


The 


Teacher-Missionary’s Method 


“How will you do it?” asked John. 

“There is only one way, John,—the 
way of the Teacher. He was a mis- 
sionary and he was building a church. 
He was making a heavy investment in 
that church. For it to break down 
would be a terrible loss of his labors and 
sacrifice. He was to turn over his 
church to twelve men—its organization 
and administration and doctrines and 
practice. They might very easily ruin 
all. But he had faith in them, for he 
had trained them; and in the church, for 
it was the church of God’s love and 
sacrifice and power as well as his own. 
So before he handed over authority he 
did two things—he, the missionary. 
He assured them that though he was no 
longer to be seen he was not leaving 
them. Lo, I am with you even unto the 
end of the task. His presence, his 
counsel, his comradeship, were still to 
be theirs. He would continue to invest 
in them and to aid them though no 
longer seen at the head of the group. So 
with the missionary to-day: he is needed 
as never before, but now at the side of 
rather than at the front of the proces- 
sion, and more unseen than formerly. 
His it is to cheer, inspire, counsel,—a 
glorious, new function of international 
Christian brotherhood. 


VII—Indian Christian Leadership 


“And then the Teacher-Missionary 
gave to his disciples, now about to be- 
come apostles (for in those two words 
you have the same transfer in Judea 
which now is on in India), the gift of 
his own spirit. He breathed on them 
all inside the closed doors and said, 


“Receive ye the Holy Spirit.’ They 


were to tarry in Jerusalem until they 
had received in power his spirit—the 
spirit of love and wisdom and power. 
With the spirit of Christ within them 
any leaders are safe, and we need not 
worry about the organization, admin- 


Professor James Devadasan, a.leader in Chris- 
tian education 


istration, doctrines, or practice. They 
will fall into line behind. If the leaders 
are in consonance with his spirit they 
are for him, and not against him. 


“So we come back to where we began. 
Indian Christian leadership must be 
made to follow the Christ, and not its 
own self-glorification or aggrandize- 
ment. Discipleship must be the other 
side of the banner of apostleship. 
Indian leaders must follow before they 


lead, and ever follow while they lead. 
The Christ must be ever in their eyes 
and thoughts. They must be men who, 
having seen him, never cease to see him. 
They must be men who, having heard 
once his fourfold call, ‘Come : 
abidemuva gO feed,’ hear 
that same call daily and obey. And 
there are such men in India—men of 
my color and race. We need many. 
more. With such Indian Christian 
leaders, together with their missionary 
associates of the same mind and vision, 
there is no fear but that the Church of 
Christ in India will have its victories 
and be found worthy to stand beside the 
other churches who honor the Christ 
and toil for him in other countries of 
our world.” 


Discussion Questions 


WHAT GREAT PROBLEM confronts 
the future development of the Indian 
Christian Church? 

Do the native Christians want their 
own leadership? Why? 

What stands in the way of a develop- 
ment of native leadership? 

Does the influence of caste enter into 
the problem? 

Is it an easy matter to transfer 
authority and control from the mis- 
sionaries to Indian leaders? 

From our point of view what hinders 
this transfer? 

To what extent is the movement for 
a self-controlled church under way? 

Is it correct to think of the Indian 
Christians as babes in Christ? 

Compare the present situation as to 
native leadership with the training of 
the apostles in the first Christian 
century. 

Was the task of the apostles harder 
then than that which confronts Indian 
leadership to-day? 

By what means is Christ training 
Indian leaders for their increasingly 
responsible duties? 


NARAYAN VAMAN TILAK was a 
sadhu— one of those whose thought 
is always to express their own 
private souls and their own private 
needs in passionate poetic utter- 
ance and to find solace in the love 
of a divine companion. His in- 
fluence is personal but it is not 
therefore limited in its range. It 
remains in his songs, which will be 
sung, we may be sure, for genera- 
tions. While Mr. Tilak’s influence 
is so intensely personal and in- 
ward, yet it is true at the same 
time that it is strongly nationalist, 
though not in any sectional inter- 
pretation of that word. One of the 
influences that drew him to Chris- 


tianity was the hope that there he 
would find a power that could re- 
store his people to strength and 
self-respect. He was unwearied in 
impressing upon his fellow coun- 
trymen that every member of the 
Indian Christian Church is an 
Indian, and that the Christian re- 
ligion should be a great means of 
service to Mother India. He also 
recovered for the church the gift, 
specially precious in India, of 
music and of singing, giving them 
songs that were not foreign echoes 
but voices from the deepest places 
in their own Indian hearts.— Nicol 
Macnicol in the International Re- 
view of Missions. 


VIII 


Types of Christian Effort in India 


THE NEXT MORNING Fazl Masih 
returned to his work at the university, 
but not before the Grays had got his 
promise to return as their guest for a 
fortnight ‘“‘as soon as school was out.” 
John rode with him for a hundred miles 
‘or so. Evidently their talk on the 
journey was very satisfactory, for Fazl 
Masih wrote me that John had taken 
him “on a pilgrimage through his soul 
and especially through the uplands, 
where I found all fresh and wholesome, 
with here and there many a_ hidden 
sanctuary in which he _ worshiped. 
Secretly I worshiped with him and re- 
joiced in all the beauty and wonder of a 
young life conscious of God and its 
duty to its fellows.” 

The months went fast, .and soon 
“school was out.” John returned, and 
then came Faz] Masih. It was one of 
those June days when nature seeks and 
achieves perfection of form and color 
and warmth with freshness—one of 
those “rare”? June days of which the 
poet sings: 


“Then heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
And over it softly her warm ear lays.” 


In God’s Out-of-Doors 


Fazl Masih was almost beside him- 
self with the sheer delight in the beauty 
of it all and laughed like a child. Like 
Francis of Assisi, whose life was an 
inspiration to him, he spoke all that day 
of his little sisters the flowers and his 
little brothers the birds. Strange that 
one born and reared in the mud and 
dust of an Indian village should so love 
beauty. 


“Tt is not the Chamar in me but the , 


Christ,” he added apologetically when 
we looked strangely at him. “He has 
taught me to love the lilies of the field, 
the sparrows who fly with God’s eye 
ever on them, the mustard bushes that 
grow tiny seeds, the clouds red at sunset, 
the very early morning when every- 
thing wakes with joy and prayer, the 
mountains and the lakes. Not the rare 
flowers and birds and trees but those 
most common were his constant delight. 
In complaining of the weather or even 
in approving the weather how often we 
fail to see the wonder of these com- 
mon things and to make them the texts 
of our life sermons for that day!” 

We were sitting in an open meadow 
beside a little stream—a “‘creek” they 
called it—, getting ready for a picnic 
supper. Faz] Masih’s “little sisters the 
daisies and buttercups” and his “little 
brothers the birds and butterflies and 


Scripture Reference: Luke 4. 31-44 


grasshoppers” furnished the decorations 
and the music in rich abundance. Rugs 
and books were there for those that 
wanted them. 

Mr. Gray came back after an un- 
successful attempt at fishing and sat 
down beside him. 

“Well, Fazl Masih, what here reminds 
you of India? Any fishing there?” 
Fazl Masih laughed. “Yes, 

catch them there.” 

Mr. Gray began to stammer excuses, 
but Fazl Masih stopped him: “Catch 
them in nets. Professional fishermen 
only—the class the Teacher was so in- 
terested in when he was looking for men 
to train, because fishing develops hardi- 
hood, skill, patience, character.” 

“You’re right there,” answered Mr. 
Gray, laughing, “even if you don’t 
catch a fish.” 

“His fishermen disciples sometimes 
fished all night and caught nothing; 
that too was good training for what he 
had in view.” 


The Need for Health 


they 


Then Faz! Masih shifted quickly: 
“What India needs as much as books is 
fishing and picnic suppers—all the 
things that make for health of body. 
You can’t build the kingdom of heaven 


INDIA’S GREAT NEED for medical 
and sanitary assistance has from 
the first enlisted mission effort. 
To-day in more than five hundred 
centers, mission doctors and nurses 
in hospital and dispensary show 
forth the love of Christ. Pain is 
relieved, the sick are healed, the 
lepers cared for. Every cure is an 
object lesson. When a Christian 
village is inoculated for plague, so 
that death passes by on either side 
leaving this village immune, a blow 
is given to ingrained fatalism. 
When death rates are manifestly 
lowered, a more optimistic faith 
begins to take the place of pessi- 
mism. It will belong before govern- 
ment effort will overtake the wide- 
spread needs in this field; hence, 
the help of missions is still urgently 
required. 

One out of every seventy women 
dies in childbirth in India. The ap- 
palling mortality of mothers and 
infants is mentioned in almost 
every health officer’s report. 
Especially is there a call to- day in 
India for the relief of the suffer- 
ings of women and of the terrible 
wastage of infant life. ‘‘Ah,’’ 
said a Hindu woman, ‘‘your God 
must be a very good God to send a 
doctor to the women. None of our 
gods ever sent us a doctor.—D. J. 

Fleming in Building With India. 


a2 


in India on meager bodies. The Teacher 
wanted the spirit of children in fisher- 
men’s bodies. “Except ye become as 
little children,’ not in body but in tem- 
per and attitude; and, on the other 
hand, ‘Come ye after me,’ he said, not 
to children but to strong men who 
could endure with him all the rigors of 
physical strain in marching and, at 
night, of having no place to lay one’s 
head. The Teacher was the Physician, 
a medical missionary, using hands to 
heal while with his voice he bade men 
and women cease to do the things that 
provoke and induce disease. Health he 
delighted in and came to make men 
healthy. India must have his good 
news of health.” 

“How many kinds of missionaries are 
you going to make me pay for and 
furnish?” asked Mr. Gray, laughing. 
“Preach to them and educate them. 
That will stop disease at its twofold 
source—sin and ignorance. Those who 
need healing should then go to the 
doctors, not to the Christian preachers 
and teachers. In seeking to do every- 
thing, Fazl Masih, you will end by doing 
nothing.” 


Why Medical Missions? 


“India is desperately in need of 
healing,” replied Fazl Masih. “Its 
women have scarcely any attention. 
Only a few of her men have medical 
privileges. In hordes they come into 
the world; in hordes they sicken— 
cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, ma- 
laria, skin diseases, blindness, leprosy, 
enlarged spleen, tuberculosis, child- 
birth without any sanitary protection—; 
in hordes they helplessly and hopelessly 
die. Can the Christ spirit in any man, 
seeing such infirmities and diseases, 
keep from taking and bearing them? 
Does not the Christ idea of itself 
germinate into hospitals and dispen- 
saries, sanitariums and leper asylums, 
when planted like a seed in such soil? 
Would the Christ message among such 
people have any value whatsoever if 
the reverse side of ‘As ye go preach’ 
were not ‘As ye go heal’? Along with 
the sacramental cup of the Lord’s blood 
shed for us must go the cup of cold 
water given for kindness’ sake. A 
body broken by wicked men may be a 
sacrifice unto God, but God takes no 
delight in millions of bodies broken by 
disease.” 

“That is all very well in theory,” said 
Mr. Gray, “but suppose you do stop 
disease and lessen the mortality by a 


VIII—Types of Christian Effort in India 


great combined effort of Christian 
agencies and governmental agencies: 
what then will happen? You will so 
everpopulate India that it could not 
possibly support its population; the 
economic level would be depressed even 
more; and, through lack of food and 
clothing and housing space, disease 
would again carry off its myriads.” 


Emigrate—Where? 


“But emigration might solve that,” 
said John, anxious to come to Fazl 
Masih’s relief. “India could send her 
surplus population elsewhere.” 

“No,” answered Fazl Masih, unable 
to receive John’s aid, “emigration is not 
the solution for Mr. Gray’s problem.” 

“Why?” asked John. 

“Because Indian immigrants are 
welcome nowhere except in the East 
Indies, which are filling up more rapidly 
with Chinese from China’s overflow. 
No ‘white man’s land’ wants Indian 
immigrants, and other lands are already 
supporting, for the most part, their full 
quota of population. This problem ot 
overpopulation—and it is a real prob- 
lem, all tied up with health and eco- 
nomic betterment—must be solved 
from within. The solution does not lie, 
Mr, Gray, in the continued prodigious 
slaughter of infants by ignorance and 
neglect nor in the continued heavy 
mortality of adults by preventable 
diseases. Any civilization that would 
condemn India to such a state in order 
to keep down increase in population has 
no right to one single letter of the word 
‘Christian.’”’ 

“Except the ‘h,’’’? commented Mrs. 
Gray, who was quietly arranging the 
picnic supper on the white tablecloth, 
“which begins a certain word that 
might describe it.” 

Fazl Masih smiled. 

“You are right,” he said and then 
went on: “India must, by Christian 
help and private help and state help, 
bring down its heavy casualty list in the 
war with death and disease, and then, 
by intensive farming, by manufacturing, 
by opening up with irrigation large 
areas lying infertile, and by more men 
in the professions, support its own in- 
creasing population until in time, as 
usually happens, the birth rate is 
lowered in proportion to the death rate. 
Then you have reached your goal, and 
your solution has been Christian 
throughout.” 


More Giants to Slay 


“So you believe in Christian hospitals 
in India?” asked Mr. Gray. 

“The new India must have them,” 
answered Fazl Masih, “or the Giants of 
Ill Health, Ignorance, and Superstition, 


Dr. H. W. Knight examining a patient in a wayside clinic in Calcutta 


finding her on their land, will throw her 
into some Castle of Despair and keep 
her there. Let your Evangelistic 
Christianity help in slaying Giant 
Superstition, your Educational Chris- 
tianity help in slaying Giant Ignorance, 
and your Medical Christianity help in 
slaying Giant Ill Health: then the 
new India can run its course, while the 
Christ once more can say: ‘He hath 
sent me to proclaim release to the 
Captivesig ss), 9) 1 o-dayehaththis 
scripture been fulfilled in your ears.’” 

Here Eleanor broke in: 

“T am going to be a doctor.” 

“Not in India,” snapped Mr. Gray 
as if heading off by instant protest some 
terrible calamity. 

“Why not, father?” 


“Because I have not yet given my 
consent to John’s going and I am not 
going to have both my children on the 
other side of the world.” The state- 
ment was not altogether logical, spoken, 
as it was, in excitement. 


NOT MORE than three million 
of the one hundred and fifty mil- 
lion women of India are within 
reach of competent medical aid. 
. . . The tragic need of Indian 
women for more adequate medical 
care has resulted in the rapid 
growth of medical missions, and 
the woman doctor paves the way 
for the zenana teacher and other 
liberal influences.—F. B. Fisher in 
India’s Silent Revolution. 


Fazl Masih intervened. “If I were 
seeking for that life which alleviates 
more human suffering than any other 
and which more than any other is a 
burst of sunlight in darkness I should 
find it, I think, in a Christian woman 
doctor in a non-Christian land.” 

“Thank you for that,” said Eleanor, 
smiling. 

“Supper is ready,” called Mrs. Gray 
hastily, brushing off a tear or two with 
her napkin. “Now let’s sit down and 
enjoy hee 

The Ministry of Books 


At the table the company fell to dis- 
cussing literature—seemingly a per- 
fectly safe subject. The whole Gray 
family loved reading and did a great 
deal of it, much of it aloud at evening. 
“Outdoors and books” was a common 
family motto. The Grays had de- 
veloped a taste for good literature— 
books with the substance of an ice-cream 
sundae rather than books with the 
thinness of an ice-cream soda. Fazl 
Masih had not read as many but had 
read more thoughtfully. 

Mr. Gray himself brought the con- 
versation back to India. The subject 
fascinated him even while he feared it 
for its possible consequences on his 
home. 

“Why don’t you propose a new kind 
of missionary for India—missionaries 
of good literature?” 

“What would they do?” asked Fazl 
Masih with a sly smile, drawing Mr. 


VIII—Types of Christian Effort in India 


Gray on, or, rather, SES ely what was 
in him out. 

“They would translate good books 
2 ” 
into the Indian languages 

“Father is improving,” 


interrupted 


Eleanor, “Listen to him say ‘Indian 
languages’ rather than ‘the Hindu 
language.’ He will soon be a walking 


encyclopedia and answer all questions 
on India without an error.” 

“Don’t interrupt, Eleanor. I have 
got the scent of a brilliant idea and am, 
bloodhound fashion, on its trail. Don’t 
throw any false scents around here,” 

“Go on,” said Eleanor. 

“Translate good books, even write 
good books, not on religion only but on 
politics and law and the social sciences.’ 

“And raising poultry,” interrupted 
Eleanor again. 

“Why not?—and household hygiene 
and gardening 

“And thrilling fiction— —— 

“Wait a minute, Eleanor,—not too 
fast,” said her father, still after the 
idea. 

Fazl Masih sat there smiling, then 
unfolded a paper from his pocket: 


A Challenge in Print 


”» 


“This is the latest issue of this 
weekly. It came to me this morning 
as I was leaving. Here is your idea, 
caught, Mr. Gray, by other blood- 
hounds too.” He began to read: 
“What ought we to say on the subject 
of Christian literature in this great 
seething, anxious, 


to-day? We need far more Christian 
literature than we now have. In order 
to appeal adequately to educated 


Indians the Christian church needs to 
produce more literature than we have 
yet done. There is great opportunity 
for high-class literature in English for 
the educated classes. There is a 
perfectly limitless field open to us for 
vernacular literature. Surely the 
Church of Christ in India, leaning on 
the resources of Europe and America, 
ought to be able to deluge the Indian 
masses with healthy and trustworthy 
Christian literature in the vernaculars. 
Such a flood of excellent booklets and 
pamphlets would do inestimable service 
to the Kingdom. So far,as I can see, 
the average Indian villager, whether 
man or woman, has a great liking for 
books, especially for religious books, 
and above all for religious poems. 
Those who cannot read are not only 
ready but infinitely eager to listen 
while another reads, recites, or sings 
some moving piece of religious verse or 
prose. Think of the limitless success of 
kathas, kirtans, jatras, and_ public 
recitations in every part of India. Any 
one who has witnessed these gather- 


troubled India of 


ings knows their limitless appeal to the 
Indian heart. Thus, there is an 
audience which no man can number, 
ready to listen to the story of Christ 
in vernacular verse, as soon as we are 
able to offer it. 

“Tf then, the Christian cause needs a 
great advance in literature, both in 
English and vernacular, we can at 
once proceed to the simple inference: 
the church needs far more writers than 
she has to-day. Yor each one of us this 
is a serious thought. Have I thus far 


done all my duty in this matter? Ought 


Operating a band saw in the Industrial School 
at Nadiad, India 


I to train myself to be a writer? Anda 
still more important question: Have I 
done all that is possible to find Indian 
Christians to write? For, given two 
writers of equal capacity—one a mis- 
sionary and one an Indian Christian—, 
the Indian Christian will be of far more 
value than the missionary.’! 

“So you see, Mr. Gray, philanthropic 
—or, rather, missionary—Christianity 
has to do wick the writer’s pen and 
printer’s ink as well as the surgeon’s 
knife and the teacher’s blackboard and 
the preacher’s sermon. 

“And that is not all. Have you ever 
thought of the place of the Bible in our 
civilization? The Christian’s task in 
India is to translate the Bible, have it 
printed, and then see to its distribution 
and sale. For that purpose both mis- 
sionaries and Indian agents are con- 


1J, N. Farquliar in the Indian Witness. 


24 


stantly at work. Sometime you shall 
hear of India’s new interest in our 
Bible.” 

“You are forgetting to eat,” 
Gray gently reminded the Indian. 


Mrs. 


The Industrial Missionary 


“Just a moment, Mrs. Gray, and I 
shall be finished. We are speaking of 
the great variety of Christian activity 
in India. We must not forget the in- 
dustrial missionary and his Indian 
helpers, who sanctify and hallow the 
plow, the silo, the chicken farm, the 
machine shop, the shoemaker’s tools, 
and all the various activities of the hand 
for the purposes of bettering the life and 
lifting the economic capacity of our 
Christian people, that they may be self- 
respecting and able to support all their 
own religious activities. Industrial 
training is not only a jack for boosting 
the economic level of the Christian com- 
munity but an object lesson of the 
attitude of Christianity toward manual 
labor. The religion of the Carpenter 
must not be allowed in any country to 
get too far from the Carpenter’s shop or 
the instruments of labor. So we need 
industrial missionaries to show that in 
the Christian New Testament, as in the 
so-called New Testament of the Hindus 
—the ancient Bhagavad-Gita—, there 
is a gospel for workers. 

“And so you see, Mr. Gray, as the 
young Carpenter of Nazareth, teaching 
by tools before he began to teach by 
parables, drew for his purpose this tool 
and that from his bag until the yoke or 
the plcw or the doorpost was fashioned, 
so his representatives in India to-day, 
following his lead, now preach, now 
teach, now heal, now write, now print, 
now labor skillfully with the hand, that 
in each and all the spirit of their 
Teacher may be made manifest, and 
so his design for the new India come to 
glorious completion.” 


Discussion Questions 


COMPARE India with America as to 
the state of public health. 

Name some diseases prevalent in 
India. 

What do you think of Mr. Gray’s 
suggestion that medical missions have 
no valid place in the missionary enter- 
prise? 

What part, if any, has Christian 
literature in the remaking of India? 

Would books written by mission- 
aries and translated into the vernac- 
ulars be as helpful as books written by 
educated Indian Christians? 

Describe the work of an industrial 
missionary. Can _ he properly’ be 
called a missionary? Why? 


IX 


India’s History—Before 1914 


ONE EVENING Mr. Gray took Fazl 
Masih down to the men’s club, which 
met every other week in the hall over 
the largest grocery. Frequently there 
was a speaker, political or otherwise; 
more often it was an informal get-to- 
gether, with some games and more so- 
called discussion, in which local topics, 
as well as topics more general in 
interest, received due consideration to 
the accompaniment of much smoking 
and loud expression of unalterable 
opinions on the part of those whose 
minds were no longer open, and who 
were determined to fasten their opinions 
on others whether with or against their 
will. 

It was interesting to see how quickly 
the Indian, stranger though he was, 
fitted into the situation. Without 
losing his fineness of reserve, his dignity 
clad in humility, he entered into the 
thoughts and attitudes of these men 
who represented every trade and pro- 
fession of that town. 

Of course, they were most eager to 
know about the political situation in 
India, reading as ae did this and that 
in the newspapers but being unable to 


Scripture Reference: Psa. 96 


THE HISTORY OF INDIA falls 
into three main divisions: the 
Hindu period, the Mohammedan 
period, and the period of the 
establishment of European do- 
minion. 

These are rough divisions, as the 
periods overlap, and it is not 
possible to define them sharply or 
to assign dates to their beginning 
or ending. But they serve as a 
framework and they broadly in- 
dicate the current of the story of 
India. 

Each period marks the invasion 
of India by fresh races from colder 
climes and the transfer of the 
country in whole or in part to new 
masters. Some persons may see 
in this the tragedy of India. But 
a more hopeful and a better view 
is to regard the past as the passage 
to and preparation for a higher 
system than would have otherwise 
been attainable.—Sir T. W. Hol- 
derness in Peoples and Problems of 
India. 


put this and that together in order to 
arrive at comprehension. The news- 
paper paragraphs were only parts of a 
jig-saw puzzle, and they were glad to 
have someone, especially an Indian, 


show them the general design of modern 
Indian history. 


“English Tyranny’”’ 


Even those with the short-circuited 
minds—those, as Eleanor put it, who 
flew high on their opinions—were willing 
listeners, though most eager that he 
should dwell on the “English tyranny” 
and justify their dislike of British im- 
perialism. They started him off with: 

“Why are the British in India? What 
right have they there any more than 
we have? India should be free. Don’t 
be afraid, Mr. , Mr. Friend: you 
can speak frankly and fully here of the 
English tyranny.” 

Faz] Masih smiled and _ replied: 
“Gentlemen, I am an Indian, and it 
pleases me much to see your interest 
in my country. India loves America, 
looks to her with great enthusiasm and 
reverence. When America turns her 
head and acknowledges India’s saluta- 
tion, it pleases us much; for America 
has the reputation of being very great 
but very near-sighted—and India, as 
you know, is far away.” 


The men laughed, and Fazl Masih 


THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT has 
to meet the needs of a modern 
state with the slender resources of 


an Oriental community. More- 
over, it has to bear the blame not 
only for its own faults but also for 
plagues and badly managed mon- 
soons, just as American adminis- 
trations are blamed for bad har- 
vests and the influenza. When all 
is duly considered, there is much 
truth in the British assertion: 
“We have labored untiringly to 
reconcile Hindu and Moslem. Our 
schools and our railroads have 
shaken the exclusiveness of caste; 
ancient privileges are disappearing 
before justice and reform laws; by 
the universal spread of the English 
language we have furnished all 
educated Indians with a common 
medium for exchanging their 
thoughts. We found India under 
an inefficient despotism and we 
banished it.’’ At the Darbar in 


Delhi the thought came to me that 
only the British rule made it pos- 
sible for all the forty Indian princes 
to meet peacefully under one 
GAanopy. uae 

With those who only carp at 
what England has done in India I 
have no patience. They belong 
with those who, as Sydney Smith 
said, curse the solar system, be- 
cause under it has come all our 
woe. 

As for me the marvel of British 
rule in India never ceased to ap- 
peal to my imagination. In 
Bombay or Madras or Calcutta 
the British society, with its British 
statues, British churches, British 
conventions, and red post boxes, 
goes serenely on as if there were no 
brown waves of humanity beating 
ever upon the shores of this island 
of English life. In India there is 
one ruler to two hundred thousand 
ruled. No wonder that Horace 


Walpole cried: ‘‘The Romans were 
triflers to us.’’ 

If the British should leave sud- 
denly, without preparing the In- 
dians through a long period to 
assume the burden of government, 
there might easily be realized the 
prophecy which a governor of one 
of the great Indian provinces made 
to me. ‘‘There would be at once 
riot, murder, rapine, in the great 
cities,’ he _ said. “All money 
lenders would stop business, all 
stores close, there would be no 
food. Within three weeks or a 
month the Afghans would pour in 
from the Northwest for pillage, 
plunder, and rapine. The Parsees 
would be wiped out of Bombay, 
the Marwari from Calcutta. Mo- 
hammedan would be _ arrayed 
against Hindu, Hindu against Mos- 
lem. Millions would pay the forfeit; 
anarchy would reign.’’—C. H. Van 
Tyne in the AtlanticMonthly. 


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IX—India’s History—Before 1914 


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From The Centenary Surveys 


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continued: “During the war America 
went to the oculist and was fitted with 
glasses, “which helped her myopia. 
She was able to see clearly and see far. 
Then somebody knocked them off her 
nose and stepped on them, and she 
hasn’t as yet been refitted.” 

“No politics here, or you will have an 
uproar,” laughed the men. 

“Tt isn’t politics but calamities that I 
am speaking of. But it is no calamity 
to have your interest. And, to be per- 
fectly fair, up to the present it has been 
no calamity to have had the British 
control over India. All my country- 
men acknowledge the debt of India to 
England 


In the Days of Conquest 


The opinionated winced a bit at that, 
and Fazl Masih saw it and went on: 
“You see, the British are only the last 

wave of invasion in India’s long history. 
There have been many previous con- 
quests—tides of invasion flowing from 
the northwest through the broken 
mountain passes on to the fertile plains 


of the five rivers—the Punjab—and 
then down through historic Hindustan, 
which lies in the lap of the Jumna- 
Ganges system, and so into steamy 
Bengal, with its teeming population. 
When North India, from northwest to 
southeast, has been conquered, the 
invaders turn south and make their way 
slowly and with difficulty, through the 
rough-tangled Central India country, 
into the rocky plateau of the southland 
—the Deccan—, which is always the 
last to yield—if it has really yielded at 
all. These successive invaders and their 
partial admixture with those that have 
preceded them have given rise to the 
many races and languages of India. 
Why should I worry you with names? 
India is one of the ancient lands, and 
through the centuries—drip, drip, drip 
—her roof has leaked. If I had a map I 
could show you just where the holes in 
the mountain roof that covers India 
are found—Khyber Pass, Bolan Pass, 
etc. A country that has a leaky roof 
always has its troubles.” 
“America is too leaky also,” 
26 


com- 


mented Mr. Gray. “Our home is being 

spoiled by this everlasting rain of im- 
migrants that we can’t or don’t shut 
out. Just look at the front rooms—the 
Atlantic States. They are almost 
ruined.” 

“Let’s get back to India’s troubles 
before we start a discussion of our own,” 
pleaded one. 

“Well, India’s troubles are troubles of 
unassimilated races, tribes, peoples, all 
separated from one another and kept 
from unity by distinctions of race, 
language, religion, caste, dress, and 
custom. The result has been disunion 
and chaos. Every little prince or tribal 
chieftain has fought with his neighbors 
until some new invading conqueror, 
coming from the north, has swept them 
all into submission. ‘Then, when the 
conqueror’s strength has waned from 
overexertion, either some new invader or 
the little princes and tribal chieftains, 
recovering, drag him from power and 
fall to fighting among themselves until 
some new overlord swoops on them. 
So, unchanged (except for the actors), 
the old drama of conquest and chaos 
has gone on through the long centuries. 
No country could ever be formed under 
such circumstances, and India has never 
known nationhood.” 


The Coming of British Rule 


“The last series of invasions, however, 
came from the sea—a leak in the wall 
rather than the roof. In the sixteenth 
century came the Portuguese; in the 
seventeenth the Dutch had their great 
chance; in the eighteenth the French 
and English fought for supremacy. 
The French lost India just as they lost 
Canada—from lack of support at home. 

“Now, what the English have done 
in India—and every reasonable Indian 
recognizes it—is to make _ possible 
nationhood. They have laid the founda- 
tion on which we Indians must build a 
nation. They have done the prelimi- 
nary work, cleaning the ground, remov- 
ing the obstacles on which the structure 
must rise. And for that we give them 
credit. The problem now between 
Indians and English is simply this: 
whether now, with the foundations laid, 
Indians are to be permitted to plan and 
put up the building of their national life 
or whether the English will continue to 
supervise, with some Indian advice and 
assistance, the affairs of my land. Both 
English and Indians are divided, and 
the solution is most difficult. 

“But let me get back to the early 
work of the British before I go into the 
modern problem. The English came to 
India solely for purposes of trade. The 
Mohammedan Mogul Empire was at 
its zenith, and no one dreamed of a 


British Empire which should supersede 
it. So the English established their 
little trading posts on the coast, the 
three principal ones having since then 
grown into the three great commercial 
cities of India—Calcutta, Bombay, 
and Madras.” 


The British Empire in India 


“Soon after their arrival the break-up 
began, and India once more passed from 
conquest to chaos. The British, to 
protect their trading posts, kept ex- 
tending the fences around them until 
the three settlements had become the 
three great ‘presidencies’ of Bengal, 
Bombay, and Madras. So the British 
protected their trade by continuous 
enlargement of their territories and by 
entering into alliances with this and that 
small Indian potentate—for a considera- 
tion. It was a clever game and it helped 
considerably in a policy of expanding 
trade and power. Finally, in the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century, came 
the man! who saw the drift of events 
and deliberately and openly began to 
bring all India under British control— 
in other words, to establish a British 
Empire in India. So the real conquest 
of India began. 

“For fifty years it went on. One 
Indian prince after another, one king- 
dom after another, for one excuse or 
another, with war or without war, fell 
into the British lap. There was some 
hard fighting, but who could resist 
British arms and discipline? By 1857 
two thirds of India was actually colored 
red on the map, under direct British 
rule, the original rulers deposed and 
pensioned. The other one third was 
headed for the same fate when the so- 
called Indian mutiny broke out. This 
stopped the process and left the re- 
maining Indian princes on_ their 
cushions of authority under British 
guaranties but also under British sur- 
veillance. The English crown took over 
from the trading company, and British 
India became a charge and a responsi- 
bility of the British people in their 
Parliament.” 


The Birth of a National Spirit 


“Now, what ‘has been the British 
record? I speak as an Indian. 

“In the beginning—the days of 
chaos, the days of the trading com- 
pany,—the record is dark with duplicity, 
cruelty, intmorality, greed, and godless- 
ness; but increasingly shot through with 
light from the lives of sincere and well- 
intentioned governors and administra- 
tors sent out by the British Parliament. 
Since the crown took over in 1858, the 


1Marquis of Wellesley, Governor-General 


1798-1805. 


IX—India’s History—Before 1914 


record is light, with here and there 
streaks of darkness. In the spirit of a 
paternal despotism has India been ruled 
up to the present by British crown and 
Parliament and ‘Government of India.’ 
It was perhaps well for a period of con- 
fusion and for the infancy of a nation— 
and India is grateful for the many 
benefits conferred by British rule—; 
but now, as you well know, adolescence 
and paternal despotism do not mix well 
in any home. Try it in your homes and 
ae, 

“We have tried it,” said two or three 
of the men, laughing, more ruefully 
than boisterously. 

“Well, the British are themselves re- 
sponsible for the birth, infancy, and 
adolescence of the Indian national 
spirit. They gave India the peace with- 
out which there could have been no 
coming together whatsoever of the 
various races. No one religion was 
allowed to dominate the others, arous- 
ing fanatical hatred and_ bitterness. 
Justice was offered in the courts, and 
lessons in good government and honest 
administration were given in the sight ot 
all the people. A common language for 
all higher education—the English, which 
is your language too and binds India to 


An Indian soldier in the World War helping a 
wounded comrade to a dressing station in 
Mesopotamia 


America also—since 1834 has made it 

possible for educated Indians to ex- 

change ideas and formulate programs. 
“if 


It has also steeped the new India in the 
ideals of democracy and constitutional 
government found in English literature. 
A great system of railroads, wonderful 
highroads, telegraphs, post offices, uni- 
versities, and newspapers has bound 
India together in a manner never 
thought of in her past history. India 
began to come together not around the 
central government, around the con- 
queror’s throne, but around the ideas 
and ideals the conqueror instilled by the 
spirit and methods of his. rule and by 
the education he offered to India’s 
young men. These used the railroads 
to come together, and when they came 
together they spoke in English the words 
used by all English-speaking peoples: 
‘responsible government,’ ‘suffrage,’ 
‘self-determination,’ ‘constitutional’ 
methods,’ ‘taxation with representa- 
tion’—the words you have heard since 
childhood, but strange words and new 
words in Indian history. 

“There were of course the more 
violent phases—from 1905 to I9gI1 
especially—when extremists brought 
into play the bomb and bullet; but, on 
the whole, Indian nationalism before 
the war was for reasonable progress in 
cooperation with the English. The most 
influential Indian leaders were men con- 
structive in tendency—neither light- 
headed visionaries nor  hot-headed 
revolutionists. Those were anxious 
days, but British rule weathered them, 
and Englishmen slowly came to realize 
that some adjustment was necessary 1n 
the machinery of paternal despotism 
to meet the oncoming national spirit. 
Then came the war!” 

Fazl Masih stopped. Waiters were 
beginning to serve refreshments, and 
the attention of some of the men was 
drawn that way. Noticing their dis- 
traction, he proposed that he take the 
siding and let the ice cream have right 
of way over Indian politics. 


Discussion Questions 


DOES INDIA owe a debt to England? 
For what? 

From India’s standpoint what was 
the result of the successive conquests 
by tribal chieftain, ? 

How did the British conquer India? 

Was British occupation of India 
essential to the development of India’s 
nationhood? Why? 

From the first conquest what has 
been England’s record in the control of 
India? 

Specify some of the services rendered 
to India by its conquerors. 

Before the World War what was the 
general attitude of the people of India 
toward Great Britain? 


India’s 


AFTER ENJOYING the simple re- 
freshments the men gathered quickly 
once more about Fazl Masih, eager to 
get what to them was more interesting— 
the story and significance of recent 
events in India. 

Fazl Masih spoke briefly and with 
considerable feeling of India’s great 
part in the combined effort of many 
continents and races to block the 
German-Austrian-Turkish designs; to 
restore Belgium, which was to India the 
type and representative of all the 
weaker nations in a world of military 
power and spirit; and to make possible 
a new and better world purged of those 
principles and_ policies which had 
brought about all this bloodshed and 


universal ruin. 
India in the War 


“We responded almost to a man to 
Britain’s dire extremity. All that 
Great Britain has done in a spirit of 
unselfishness and for the good of India 
bore its rich fruitage that August day 
in 1914 when India loyally came to her 
help. Not only because she feared a 
victorious Germany but more because 
she saw in Britain her true friend 
and guardian did India thus respond. 
Never has a colonial power received a 
finer tribute of gratitude and con- 
fidence.” 

Those afflicted with Anglophobia in 
the group of men did not like this way 


Xx 


History—Since 1914 


Scripture Reference: Psa. 91 


of putting it and spoke of the armies of 
Englishmen in India. 

“Let us be fair all round in the 
spirit of our Teacher,’ said Fazl 
Masih. “I ama Christian Indian rather 
than an Indian Christian and am no 
apologist for all of Britain’s policies; 
but let this be said—that India was to a 
very serious extent denuded of British 
troops in the early days, yet India re- 
mained notably peaceful and quiet. 
An Indian division heroically held the 
lines in France until Kitchener’s armies 
were ready. Almost a million and a 
half Indians volunteered for combatant 
service—nearly all of them married 
men with families, for India marries 
young—, many of them Hindus leaving 
India in the face of custom and re- 
ligious sanction, and others of them— 
Moslems—fighting their own  core- 
ligionists. On eleven battle fronts they 
fought, winning6, 500 medals for bravery. 
All this, not to speak of the large sums 
of money (almost a billion rupees) lent 
and given out of her poverty to the 
government of India for war purposes. 
It was the first time in all India’s long 
history that her peoples acted as a 
people in the performance of a common 
task. 

“Of course, with such an effort the 
national spirit grew rapidly. Action 
creates sentiment even more than 
sentiment action. Sentiment may die 


a sickly death, giving birth to nothing, 


but action is the most powerful thing 
on earth. The Buddhist and Hindu 
philosophies recognize that and build 
their theses around that axiom of life. 
The Western peoples also constantly 
proclaim it by their type of civilization. 
In action the national spirit thrived as 
Jack’s bean stalk in the soil outside his 
window.” 


The British Promise 


“Great Britain, under a_ threefold 
motive—perhaps considerably mixed 
together—, made India a great promise. 
She was grateful for Indian help, she 
was allied with other nations under 
banners inscribed ‘Making democracy 
safe for the world’ and ‘Self-determina- 
tion of small peoples’ and felt the com- 
pulsion of consistency; and she sensed 
the rising tide of national sentiment 
with all its implications. So she made 
her promise to India on the fateful 
twentieth of August, 1917.” 

“What was it?” asked one. “I 
didn’t know there was any promise in- 
volved, any pledge given.” 

“It was to give India her freedom, 
and England has failed to live up to 
it,” answered one of the wise men. 

“It was very carefully worded,” an- 
swered Fazl Masih, “and many did not 
understand its full meaning or sig- 
nificance because they did not look at 
every word. It was not a promise of 
freedom at all but a pledge that India 


| 


I HAVE WATCHED with under- 
standing and sympathy the grow- 
ing desire of my Indian people for 
representative institutions. Start- 
ing from small beginnings, this 
ambition has steadily strength- 
ened its hold upon the intelligence 
of the country. It has pursued its 
course along constitutional chan- 
nels with sincerity and courage. It 
has survived the discredit which 
at times and in places lawless men 
sought to cast upon it by acts of 
violence committed under the 
guise of patriotism. It has been 
stirred to more vigorous life by the 
ideals for which the British com- 
monwealth fought in the Great 
War and it claims support in the 
part which India has taken in our 
common struggles, anxiety, and 
victories. In truth, the desire 
after political responsibility has its 
source at the roots of the British 
connection with India. It has 
sprung inevitable from the deeper 
and wider studies of human 


thought and history, which jthat 


connection has opened to the 
Indian people. Without it the 
work of the British in India would 
have been incomplete. It was 
therefore with a wise judgment 
that the beginnings of representa- 
tive institutions were laid many 
years ago. Their scope has been 
extended stage by stage until 
there now lies before us a definite 
step on the road to responsible 
government. 

With the same sympathy and 
with redoubled interest I shall 
watch the progress along this road. 
The path will not be easy, and in 
the march toward the goal there 
will be need of perseverance and of 
mutual forebearance between all 
sections and races of my people in 
India. I am confident that those 
high qualities will be forthcoming. 
I rely on the new popular as- 
semblies to interpret wisely the 
wishes of those whom they repre- 
sent, and not to forget the interests 
of the masses who cannot yet be 
admitted to franchise. I rely on 


leaders of the people, the ministers 
of the future, to face responsibility 
and endure misrepresentation, to 
sacrifice much for the common 
interest of the state, remembering 
that true patriotism transcends 
party and communal boundaries, 
and, while retaining the confidence 
of the legislatures, to cooperate 
with my officers for the common 
good in sinking unessential differ- 
ences and in maintaining the 
essential standards of a just and 
generous government. Equally do 
I rely upon my officers to respect 
their new colleagues and to work 
with them in harmony and kindli- 
ness; to assist the people and their 
representatives in an orderly ad- 
vance towards free institutions; 
and to find in these new tasks a 
fresh opportunity to fulfill, as in 
the past, their highest purpose of 
faithful service to my people.— 
From “A Royal Proclamation’’ 
by the King-Emperor George V, 
December, 1919. 


was to begin now, in all seriousness, to 
become a self-governing unit in the 
British Empire. That is, British 
demobilization was promised, was in 
fact to begin as soon as the necessary 
legislation could be effected, but was 
to be only gradual and in accordance 
with India’s ability to take over from 
Great Britain. In other words, Eng- 
land was to let go on the ropes only as 
India was able to take up the slack. 
By a slow, gradual process, beginning 
now, India was to become progressively 
self-governing until, after the necessary 
period of training and preparation had 
elapsed, she should find herself in full 
control. Two things were made clear: 
The length of the period of preparation 
was not defined, it was to depend on the 
sincerity and capacity of the Indians 
themselves; and, secondly, when India 
had passed from increasing self-govern- 
ment to complete self-government she 
was still to remain in association with 
the other members of the British com- 
monwealth: to be brown sister to 
Canada, Australia, South Africa, New 
Zealand, and the British Isles in the 
family of nations called the British 
Empire. She could not leave home 
when grown-up.” 


Two in the Driver’s Seat 


“At first India (British India, of 
course, for native India is already self- 
governed under its own princes) was to 
be allowed to sit in the front seat of the 
car of government while England gave 
her driving lessons. She could at first 
watch the gauges and honk the horn and 
give the signal for a turn while England 
held the steering wheel and fed it gas 
and chose the route. Then India was 
to take over one after another of the 


THE OATH of the Noncooperation | 


Volunteers, representing the Ex- 
tremist Party in India: ‘‘With 
God as witness I solemnly declare 
that (1) I wish to be a member of 
the National Voiunteer Corps; (2) 
so long as I remain a member of 
the corps I shall remain nonviolent 
in word and deed, and shall earn- 
estly endeavor to be nonviolent in 
intent, since I believe that, as 
India is circumstanced, nonvio- 
lence alone can help the Khilafat 
and the Punjab and result in the 
attainment of Swaraj [home rule] 
and consolidation of unity among 
all the races and communities of 
India, whether Hindu, Mussul- 
man, Sikh, Parsi, Christian, or 
Jew; (3) I believe in and shall en- 
deavor always to promote such 
unity; (4) I believe in Swadeshi as 
essential for India’s economic, 
political, and moral salvation and 


X—India’s History—Since 1914 


A native potter at work 


controls until at last after miles of 
practice and close watching India could 
safely take the driver’s seat. The car, 
you see, could not stop, and all had to 
be learned while in motion—a difficult 
process.” 

“That sounds fair,” answered one of 
the men. “That is the way I am 
teaching my thirteen-year-old son to 
drive without going off the road and 
over the precipice, without smashing 
the engine or running over the neighbors’ 
chickens and children.” 

Fazl Masih smiled. “Yes, it sounds 
reasonable enough, but two drivers with 
divided functions are never as good as 
one, especially when one—the adoles- 
cent—feels he owns the car, that he 
already knows enough to run it, and that 


shall use handspun and hand- 
woven khaddar to the exclusion of 
every other cloth; (5) as a Hindu I 
believe in the justice and necessity 
of removing the evil of untouch- 
ability and shall on all possible 
occasions seek personal contact 
with and endeavor to render service 
to the submerged classes; (6) I 
shall carry out the instructions of 
my superior officer and all the 
regulations not inconsistent with 
the spirit of this pledge prescribed 
by the Volunteer Boards or the 
Working Committee or any other 


(7) I am prepared to suffer im- 
prisonment, assault, or even death 
for the sake of my religion and my 
country without resentment; (8) 
in the event of my imprisonment [ 
shall not claim from the Congress 
any support for my family or de- 
pendents.’’ 


29 


agency established by Congress; 


in any case the best way to learn is to 
sit at the wheel with the instructor 
beside you, where he can always grab 
the brakes before you go over the 
precipice. That is all the trouble in 
India to-day: India trying to learn to 
drive her own car while England insists 
on sitting in the driver’s seat. The great 
promise, put in the simplest words, was 
this: You shall now learn to drive your 
own car, you shall sit in the front seat 
beside me, and we shall both of us do 
the driving until you are able to do it 
alone.c. ii 


Gandhi 


“Where does Mr. Gandhi come in?” 
asked Mr. Gray. “We have heard of 
him as the great deliverer of India.” 

“Unfortunately,” continued Fazl 
Masih, “the promise of August 20, 
1917, was followed by long delay in 
passing the necessary legislation that 
was to carry it into effect. 
tinued to sit in the back seat. The 
high prices followings the war, the 
Spanish influenza, famine in parts, 
failure to negotiate quickly a treaty 
with Turkey, whose Sultan is the 
Caliph of all orthodox Moslems, dis- 
affection over the treatment given to 
Indian immigrants in other parts of the 
British Empire, Russian agents with 
their wild doctrines, the rapid growth of 
the home-rule movement (which de- 
manded immediate and complete British 
demobilization),—all these stirred up 
bitterness and trouble to take the place 
of Indian loyalty and codperation. 
The British countered by certain 
measures that amounted to a continua- 
tion in times of troubled peace of certain 


India con. ° 


powers granted to them for wartime 
only. All Indians _ protested, Mr. 
Gandhi coming forward as their most 
prominent spokesman. All over India 
was organized a _ nonviolent oppo- 
sition to British policy, which in one 
corner—the Northwest—got out of 
control and became violent. The 
British suppressed what amounted to a 
revolt with great vigor, culminating in 
a horrible massacre of an unarmed 
crowd gathered in a grove outside the 
city of Amritsar. The British officer 
in command also commanded or per- 
mitted certain indignities to be per- 
formed on the persons of Indians, 
adding to the resentment already at 
flood tide. All India felt the reper- 
cussion of these tragic events. The 
extremists, headed by Mr. Gandhi, 
leaped into control of the nationalist 
forces; while the more conservative, 
more reasonable moderates were hushed 
and put to silence, finding no words 
with which to express their feelings or 
to urge their policies. They continued 
to codperate with the British but 
without enthusiasm.” 


The Noncooperation Movement 


“Meanwhile the new legislation was 
carefully prepared and passed 1 in fulfill- 
ment of the great promise of August, 
1917. A political system called diarchy 
was installed in the provincial govern- 
ments on the principle of the double 
driving I have spoken of. The moder- 
ates help the British in working it out: 
certain departments of government 
‘reserved’ for British control and the 
other departments ‘transferred’ to In- 
dian ministers responsible to a Provin- 
cial Legislative Assembly composed for 
the most part of elected members, the 
electorate of course representing only a 
fraction of the Indian people. It is 
only a beginning, but if it is really a 
beginning, and the British are sincere 
in all their declarations, in spite of its 
many structural weaknesses and the 
clumsiness of a joint rule it may in the 
end prove a boan to my people. 

“But Mr. Gandhi and his followers, 
joined by the dissatisfied Moslem 
element, will have none of it. He 
shouted ‘nonviolence’ in the previous 
movement of opposition to the British; 
now he shouts ‘noncodperation’ with 
the British in working out the new 
scheme. The noncodperators are on 
strike, refusing to vote, to hold office, 
to countenance in any form the British 
rule, even proposing in certain regions 
the nonpayment of taxes and what they 
call ‘civil disobedience.’ A campaign 
was organized to carry their propa- 
ganda down through the three-quarter 
million villages, where ninety per cent 


X—India’s History—Since 1914 


of our people dwell, unconcerned and 
unmindful for the most part of the 
storms that sweep the surface of Indian 
politics; and the air of India was 
poisoned by the noxious fumes of race 
hatred and suspicion. Volunteers were 
enrolled—‘National Volunteers’ they 


Gandhi 


SAYINGS OF MR. GANDHI: 

1. ‘‘India is being ground down, 
not under the English heel, but 
under that of modern civilization.’’ 

2. ‘“‘There is no end to the 
victims destroyed in the fire of 
civilization. It is like a mouse 
gnawing while it is soothing us. 
It is railways, lawyers, and doctors 
that have impoverished India.”’ 


were styled—to carry forward the 
policies of the noncoéperationists. Along 
with political freedom economic inde- 
pendence was also urged in the name of 
patriotic nationalism. India was to do 
away, in large measure, with Western 
machinery and its products and to 
return, for example, to the hand loom, 
thus helping to build up once more 
ancient Indian industries destroyed by 
competition with Western machinery.” 


The Leaders Imprisoned 


“The British were tolerant at first, 
hoping the storm, with its destructive 
possibilities, Would pass without burst- 
ing on their heads, and were, to some 
extent, confused as to the wise course to 
pursue in the thickening darkness. 
Finally, they came to a decision and 
proceeded to arrest and, after trial, to 
convict Mr. Gandhi and his associates. 
Thousands of them are in jail to-day, 
and no man knows the future. On 
entering his six-year prison term Mr. 

30 


Gandhi urged quiet and _ self-control; 
and his followers, being to a certain 
extent without leadership, are obeying 
his commands. Yet no dangerous 
movement is permanently headed off 
by the method of wholesale imprison- 
ment. Out of the jails the followers of 
Mr. Gandhi will come, or others will 
take their places, and the curtain will 
rise on another act of the drama that so 
easily may become a tragedy rather 
than an epic. Meantime more moderate 
leaders are rising in influence and 
prominence and these may get control 
of the nationalist movement, in which 
case there is a possibility of peaceful 
evolution rather than destructive revolu- 
tion; for, sincere and high-souled as Mr. 
Gandhi is, yet to any man with vision 
and understanding the two policies of 
nonviolence and race hatred cannot 
dwell long together. The one will 
soften the other or be destroyed by it.” 


The Outcome 


“What is the end to be?” asked Mr. 
Gray, drawing out his watch. 

Fazl Masih arose, sensitive to the 
signal. “It all depends on the British. 
If they are wholly sincere in their 
pledges, my country may be saved the 
awful calamity of being thrown once 
again into the old chaos; if the British 
are using words to camouflage their 
real desires and purposes, then this 
century is full of woe for India. 

“But, gentlemen” —and Faz] Masih’s 
face was almost drawn with his earnest- 
ness—, “never was the spirit and 
program of our Teacher so necessary to 
the peace ‘of India and, with it, the 
peace of all the world. My hope for 
my troubled country is anchored not 


in the British motives nor in moderates © 


or extremists but solely in my con- 
fidence in the power of the Christ to 
win men’s hearts to his way of living.”’ 


Discussion Questions 


WHAT PART had India in the World 
War? 

Did India’s participation in the 
struggle stimulate her national spirit? 

How was this spirit manifested? 

How did Great Britain respond? 

Was the agreement of August, 1917, 
a promise of freedom? 

According to this plan what was to be 
India’s share in the government? 
Illustrate. 

Who is Gandhi? 

What led to the revolt of which he 
became leader? 

What is meant by the noncodpera- 
tion movement? 

Has it succeeded? 

What is likely to be the outcome? 


era ee 


XI 


How the Methodists 
“Brought the Good News” to India 


Scripture References: Acts 13. 1-3; 1 Thess. 1. 1-10 


ONE MORNING Fazl Masih was 
sitting on my porch with my recent 
Indian papers in a pile before him. 
He was particularly interested in the 
illustrated booklet issued for India and 
Burma by the Centenary Commission 
of the Methodist Epsicopal Church. 
It was entitled India Making and For- 
saking Gods. ¥azl Masih called my 
attention to some of its pages when I 
returned from downtown bringing John 
and Eleanor with me. 

“How dramatically the beginnings of 
Methodism are told! Did ever a 
church lay its foundations in such 
troubled times, amid such stirring in- 
cidents, and turn them all to great 
advantage? The commanding place 
that Methodism holds in the Christian- 
ization of India is due to a great extent 
to the spirit of its founders, who while 
the ground was soft in the great up- 
heaval of the Indian mutiny of 1857, 
dug rapidly and deeply foundations 
of considerable extent. Smaller- 
minded men would have hesit&ted and 
shown timidity in their modified pro- 
gram, but not so these imperial- 
minded pioneers. 

“From the beginning Methodism has 
been noted, even criticized, for its 
gigantic energy, its failure to make 
haste slowly. In the spirit of youth it 
has ‘attempted great things for God 
and expected great things from God’ 
(to quote William Carey) and not been 
disappointed. In the lifetime of some 
of its own missionaries it has seen its 
membership grow from none at all to 
more than four hundred thousand, and 
its churches spread from Bareilly, the 
center of the obscure division of 
Rohilkhand, to every province of India, 
to Burma, Malaysia, the Dutch East 
Indies, British Borneo, and the Philip- 
pines. ‘According to your faith be it 
done unto you’ is still the eternal 
miracle in the providence of God.” 

“Did you say ‘dramatic,’ Fazl 
Masih?” asked Eleanor, ever on the 
alert for stories of India. 


A Dramatic Story 


“Yes,” answered the Indian, lifting 
the booklet and opening it. “Here it 
is. It begins with a flight and a mas- 
sacre: the missionary William Butler 
fleeing to the mountains, the Indian 
pastor Joel. Janvier, a Presbyterian 
lent to the Methodists to help them get 
their start but never sent back, preach- 


ing fearlessly from the text ‘Fear not, 
little flock; for it is your Father’s good 
pleasure to give you the kingdom’ even 
while the mutiny was brewing just out- 


Boys in Lucknow Christian College who have 
been helped by the Centenary fund 


side the door. It burst upon them, one 
woman was beheaded, and the others 
scattered and fled. The first martyr 
of our church ‘was buried by a com- 
passionate Indian woman where she 


BEGINNING with Miss Thoburn 
as its only teacher, the school 
(now the Isabella Thoburn College, 
Lucknow) advanced steadily each 
year until by the time it was fifteen 
years old#it had become a high 
school and was spoken of in the 
annual educational report of the 
government as taking the highest 
place among the native girls’ 
schools in upper India. In 1887 
college classes were begun. Years 
afterward, when asked whether she 
did not think that she had opened 
the college prematurely, she re- 
plied: ‘‘When you girls asked for a 
college education, and I tried to get 
rid of you and did not succeed, I 
shut myself up to know God’s will 
about the matter, and I have never 
doubted my commission in spite of 
all the difficulties.’’ She once 
wrote: ‘‘Part of our work is to 
educate and train the character 
that can lead, and it is to accom- 
plish this that we formed our first 
women’s college in the Eastern 
world.’’—Mary Stearns Badley in 
God’s Heroes. 


a 


Sill 


fell—under the rose hedge that had been 
the delight of Mrs. Butler.’ 

“Fleeing to Naini Tal, the mountain 
station, until the storm was over, 
William Butler and the associates who 
joined him proceeded to ‘occupy’ it and 
succeeded in turning it into one of our 
most important stations. I have 
worshiped in our church there—the 
first house of worship used by our 
church in India—and remembered that 
originally it was an old sheepfold. But 
somehow Christ and sheepfolds do go 
fittingly together. 

“From Naini Tal, Lucknow, the very 
heart of the mutiny, was occupied. 
Lucknow was a Mohammedan city and 
capital of the old kingdom of Oudh. 
Where before the mutiny entrance was 
impossible, now there was a welcome. 
Thus was answered the dying request 
of Sir Henry Lawrence, who, wounded 
to death in the besieged residency, 
among his last words gave this charge 
to those about his bedside: ‘Let a 
Christian mission be established in 
Lucknow.’ Here are now found our 
colleges for men and women, and our 
publishing interests, as well as large 
Indian and English churches. The 
publishing house now pours out forty 
tons of Christian literature each year.” 


From Bareilly to the Himalayas 


“Bareilly was almost immediately re- 
occupied. It was the spirit of Doctor 
Butler to acknowledge no defeat. 
‘Give up Bareilly?’ he once exclaimed. 
‘Never! It is ours by right divine, and 
the gates of hell are not strong enough 
to wrest it from us.’ It was from 
Bareilly that our first convert came— 
a fine-looking, most intelligent Moham- 
medan, who became also the first Indian 
Methodist preacher (not counting the 
borrowed Presbyterian) and the first 
Indian presiding elder. His name 
signifies in English ‘appearance of the 
truth,’ and his life was not untrue to 
his name. He gave his life, and after 
him his sons followed him into the 
Christian ministry. 

“Tt was at Bareilly that the Girls’ 
Orphanage was founded chiefly from 
the pickings of a famine. The first 
girl to come was one found in the 
bazaar by Doctor Butler—a little 
girl ‘unkempt, pock-marked, and blind 
in one eye’—, yet under Christian in- 
fluences she became a Christian worker 
and the wife of a preacher. In two 


- 


XI—How the Methodists “Brought the Good News” to India 


years thirteen others were added, but 
the great famine brought cartloads of 
them until the institution was filled. 
Still it pours out a tide of finely trained 
young women, who go out to establish 
Christian homes in the surrounding 
darkness—the greatest witness that 
Christianity can produce of its power 
in human life and society. 

“In Bareilly, where the first night the 
missionaries, sleeping in a ruined palace, 
disputed the place with ‘a pack of 
jackals that roamed through the rooms,’ 
Doctor Butler built the first mission 
house. Others now stand beside it. 
Across the road from it is the Theo- 
logical Seminary, where the Indian 
ministry for our North Indian work is 
trained. Behind it are the grounds of 
the Woman’s Hospital, given by one of 
the most bigoted Mohammedan princes 
in India freely and gladly to Christian 
missionaries for medical work among 
women. “Take it, take it. I give it 
most gladly for that purpose!’ he ex- 
claimed. Thus the first woman’s 
hospital in all Asia was established. 

“So from Naini Tal and Lucknow 
and Bareilly out and out the work 
spread through what is now the United 
Provinces, in the level plains of the 
Ganges- Jumna river system, and up 
into the mountain ranges of the Hima- 
layas. In twenty years was occupied a 
country 350 miles long and 150 broad, 
an area of forty-six thousand square 
miles (slightly larger than the State of 
Ohio), with an average population of 
more than 450 to the square mile. 

“In 1870 the Woman’s Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society, founded the previous 
year, began its long procession of cap- 
able and devoted women with the two 
pioneers Isabella Thoburn, who founded 
for Asia, as well as India, its first college 
for women; and Clara Swain, who 
founded for Asia, as well as India, its 
first woman’s hospital.” 


Thoburn, Parker, Taylor 


“Those were great men—American 
and Indian—who laid the foundations. 
Preéminent stand out two men as the 
acknowledged leaders — James Mills 
Thoburn of Ohio and Edwin Wallace 
Parker of Vermont. Together they 
sailed from America (1859), together 
they landed in India, and together they 
labored in utmost harmony during long 
lifetimes of service. In our North 
Indian Church they still date chronol- 
ogy from Parker; in the rest of India 
from Taylor; and Thoburn joins the 
two together.” 

“Who was Taylor?” asked John. 

Fazl Masih went on: “The rapid 
spread from Oudh and Rohilkhand to 
the other great regions of India was 


brought about in a strange manner. 
Our pioneers saw in it signs of divine 


Dr. William Butler 


BISHOP SIMPSON had written 


Doctor Butler: ‘‘Lay broad and 
deep the foundations for Metho- 
dism in India.’’ So the journey to 
the Northwest was undertaken to 
consider the opening in Oudh and 
Rohilkhand. The best available 
method proved to be the buying of 
a small wagon which could be 
drawn by men. . . . As they 
passed through Allahabad, the 
Presbyterians very generously gave 
the new work a promising young 
student—Joel T. Janvier—to act 
as interpreter. Doctor Butler de- 
cided upon Bareilly for the start. 
With the assistance of Colonel 
Troup and Lieutenant Gowan and 
Judge Robertson a fairly good piece 
of property was secured. .. . 
Scarcely had the missionaries set- 
tled to work when ominous mutter- 
ings presaged the terrible storm 
so soon to break. On May 11 the 
uprising began with the slaughter 
at Meerut. Three days later the 
news came to Bareilly. Doctor 
Butler broke it to his wife, and they 
prayed together. In his notebook 
we read in the entry for that day: 
“Thy will be done. Remember my 
mission; let it not die.’ : 

Returning to Bareilly as soon as 
matters quieted down enough to 
allow it, Doctor Butler began the 
process of ‘‘laying broad and deep 
foundations.’’ Details may not be 
given here,lbut those who look at the 
mission properties, located in the 
most advantageous sections of the 
most strategic cities, are amazed at 
his practical genius for affairs and 
his accurate provision for future 
needs. . Orphanages for boys 
and girls, schools, a_ press, 


churches, zenana work, evangel- 
istic preaching,—all were included 
in his plans and provisions, and 
initiated._C. H. Monroe in Cen- 
tenary Bulletin (India). 


leading and consented to hold the cities 
thus strangely connected with Metho- 
dism. There came to India in 1870, by 
invitation of James M. Thoburn, an 
American evangelist whom many call 
‘the Saint Paul of Methodism.’ His 
ministry was to the seven seas, and his 
methods were most successful. His 
name was William Taylor. India had 
four years of his great career—years in 
which he labored incessantly. His work 
among the Indians was to him disap- 
pointing, for he was using methods we 
could not fully understand or appre- 
ciate. But he was at his best among 


Europeans, and to them he went where-_ 


ever he could find them in the larger 
cities of India—north, south, east, 
west. In Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, 
and many other cities he opened up 
‘English’ churches and recruited from 
America and India a ministry for them. 
These English churches began to do 
missionary work among the Indians, 
and centers of Methodism sprang up 
all over India which had only to be 
connected up to make an India-wide 
church. Out of these have come the 
nine conferences of India. 

““Nor did the movement stop with 
the boundary line of India.’ From 
India, under Thoburn, Burma was 
entered, 4nd then Singapore. All over 
Malaysia it spread, to the Dutch East 
Indies (Sumatra, Java, Borneo, etc.), 
and finally to the Philippines. ‘“To- 
day,’ says this booklet, ‘six Methodist 
bishops superintend this work, residing 
at Lucknow, Bombay, Calcutta, Banga- 
lore, Singapore, and Manila.’ 

“You remember the text of Joel 
Janvier’s sermon when a lodgment was 
first being effected in Rohilkhand: 
‘Fear not, little flock; for it sis your 
Father’s good pleasure to give you the 
kingdom.’ Thus has the Teacher ful- 
filled his word spoken that day to the 
little group. This church of which we 
are members has been signally favored. 
While we stand rejoicing let us re- 
member the attendant responsibility: 
‘to whomsoever much is given, of him 
shall much be required.’ You re- 
member the fool who rejoiced over his 
possessions and lost his soul: ‘this night 
is thy soul required of thee.’”’ 


A Forward Movement 


“And now this church is planning a 
still greater advance—a forward move- 
ment along all lines. The Indian 


Centenary Movement was projected 


in 1917, begun in 1918, and organized 
in 1919. It is not a celebration, for the 
time has not come to celebrate, but a 
serious effort to reach new levels of 
Christian life and activity. Missionaries 
and Indians are codperating heartily in 


XAI—How the Methodists “Brought the Good News” to India 


the movement. Here are some of the 
more interesting objectives: 

“To make intercession vital through- 
out the church. 

“To make effective throughout our 
work the principles of Christian steward- 
ship. 

“To hasten the day of complete self- 
support for our churches. 

“To lift the entire spiritual level of 
our Christian community. 

“To secure the full sympathy and co- 
operation of our young people in the 
enterprises of the church. 

“To educate the church as to our 
missionary obligations and opportu- 
nities. 

“To discover and prepare an adequate 
indigenous leadership. 

“To double the number of our full 
membership. 

“To reach a total baptized Methodist 
community of half a million. 

“To double the number of workers 
receiving instruction in our theological 
and Bible-training schools. 

“To enroll a time legion of ten thou- 
sand persons, each of whom is pledged 
to give a minimum of two hours of 
voluntary service to evangelistic effort 
every week. 

“To triple the number of Christian 
students studying in our colleges and 
high schools. 

“To establish five hundred additional 
village primary schools and double the 
present attendance of Christian chil- 
dren. 

“To make high school and college a 
recruiting ground for Christian service 
through effective students’ volunteer 
bands. 

“To sell five million Scripture portions 
in the various vernaculars. 

“To raise a Centenary fund of five 
million rupees, which is equal in ex- 
change to one and two thirds million 
dollars. In purchase value it would be 
greater than that. . 

“For almost three years the Cente 
nary campaign has gone on, and the 
results have been striking. ‘In the face 
of unprecedented political complica- 
tions, despite the disappointment of 
curtailed support from the home base, 
and notwithstanding the difficulties 
that hard times, partial famine condi- 
tions, and the unsettled state of the 
country in recent months have brought 
upon us we have maintained the stride of 
victory and kept our morale.’ ” 

Fazl Masih closed the booklet and 
laid it down. “Have I tired you with 
history?” he said. “I thought you 
might be interested in the results of 
your own efforts.” 


Finish the Building 


It was Eleanor who answered: “It is 
all confusing to me—those names of 
men and women and places. How is 
Methodist work any different from any 
other?” 

Faz] Masih answered: “I have been 
speaking to-day according to your ways 
of estimating results. To me_ all 
churches and missions are laborers in 
the vineyard, some arriving late and 
some earlier, some emphasizing this 
method and some that. To-day, for 


your sake, I have been a Methodist in 


Bishop James Mills Thoburn 


THE PART AND PLACE Bishop 
Asbury had in making the early 
history of American Methodism, 
Bishop Thoburn has had in mak- 
ing the early history of our church 
in Southern Asia. . . . Both 
Asbury and Thoburn were ac- 
knowledged leaders, each in his 
own field, before being made 
bishops. In each field there were 
about fifteen thousand Christians 
when these men were elected. 
Asbury lived to see two hundred 
thousand members of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church in America, 
and Thoburn remained effective 
long enough to see a Methodist 
Christian community of about two 
hundred thousand in Southern 
Asia. (In the years of his retire- 
ment this number has doubled.) 
. . . The American branch of 
Methodism was planted in India, 
as truly as was the apostolic 
church, by divinely called and 
spiritually equipped men and 
women. A story of these founders 
and their work, unsurpassed in 
Methodist history, is yet to be 
written. James Mills Thoburn 
early became the recognized leader 
of these pioneers.—Bishop Frank 
ree ae in Thoburn—Called of 
od. 


33 


my way of speaking. It was this church 
that drew me from the village, and I 
have been grateful. To tell the truth 
there is no church to which the mass 
movement offers itself in greater volume 
than to this church. It has the all- 
round missionary equipment, using all 
types of work fully and successfully. 
It has spread itself so widely that it 
has both national and _ international 
significance in the affairs of the Southern 
Asiatic world. It has a strong force of 
rare men and women—Americans, In- 
dians, English, Anglo-Indians, Cana- 
dians,—that man its ranks. To it has 
been assigned to build an important 
section of the Christian structure in 
India. It has accordingly laid large 
foundations and proceeded to build 
upon them. But do you remember the 
Teacher’s story of the man who began 
to build a tower and was unable to 
finish, and all made fun of him: “This 
man began to build, and was not able 
to finish’? That is the parable for ¥ 
But Eleanor took it out of his mouth: 
“That was the Teacher talking to the 
Methodists of his time, wasn’t it?” 


Discussion Questions 


WHEN was the Methodist Episcopal 
Church planned in India? 

What is the approximate member- 
ship of the church in India to-day? 

Tell the dramatic story of the be- 
ginning of Methodism in India. 

What .did William Butler do for 
India? 


Why are Lucknow and Bareilly im- 
portant Methodist centers? 


What territory is now occupied by 
the church? 


When and through whom did the 
Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society 
begin its work in India? 

What three great names are as- 
sociated with the development of 
Christian missions in India? 

Who was William Taylor and what 
special work did he accomplish in India? 

How many Methodist bishops now . 
superintend the work in India? 

Who are they and where are they 
stationed? 

What part is India taking in the 
Centenary movement? Name some of 
the objectives of the Indian Church. 

Have results from the Centenary so 
far been promising? 

How may they be made more so? 

Is there a danger of being compla- 
cently satisfied with past accomplish- 
ments in India, of failing to enlarge 
and to develop the work? Discuss. 


XII 


The Present Opportunity 


Scripture References: Matt. 2. 10, 11; John 12. 20-32; Rev. 11. 15 


THE LAST NIGHT of the fortnight 
was a memorable one for the Grays. 
They had asked me to come in after 
supper, and it was past midnight when 
I reached home once more. 

During the fourteen days spent so 
delightfully as their guest Fazl Masih 
had got very intimately into the family 
life of the Grays. His own heart like- 
wise opened wide to these new friends. 
His whole being was suffused with 
gratitude and tenderness. Once that 
evening he spoke of it, saying that he 
could better understand the Teacher’s 
willingness to accept invitations to 
dine (when he came “eating and drink- 
ing’), because every meal was an 
opportunity to make that home in 
some measure his own home. Jesus 
was homeless, and nothing on earth 
was so attractive to him as the home. 


The Homeless One 


“Why do you say that?” asked Mrs. 
Gray. 


“Because he made home his ideal of 
the perfected world order, where other 
teachers had made the state. Others 
have spoken of God as King or Creator 
or Judge, but the Teacher spoke of him 
as Father and of men as brothers in his 
home. You remember, too, how old he 
was before he left his childhood home. 
He clung to it as long as he could. His 
greatest miracles were the restoration of 
broken homes: the daughter at Caper- 
naum; the son at Nain; the brother at 
Bethany. To make the whole world a 
home he denied himself a home; for the 
fatherhood of God he surrendered 
fatherhood for himself. Only the 
homeless, like myself, can appreciate 
the measure of his sacrifice. What the 
foxes and the birds of the air enjoy is 
not given to those men who would enjoy 
it most. ‘Who is my mother, and who are 
my brethren?’ we say with a pang, and 
the smile goes out from our lives; then, 
when we are welcomed into such circles 
as this, the smile comes back, and we 
say gratefully, “Behold, my mother and 
my brethren!” 


A strange smile indeed came over the 
Indian’s face; then he said abruptly: 


“Mrs. Gray, what India needs to- 
day is home life.” 


“T can understand that,” answered 
Mrs. Gray. “The seclusion of women 
for a lifetime within four walls, child 
marriage, the abuse of widows,—there 
can never be home life as lone as these 
continue.” ‘ 


The Unity of Home Life 


“T was not thinking of it in that 
way,” said Fazl Masih. “That, of 
course, is taken for granted even by 
multitudes who still tolerate such 
things, because they are part and 
parcel of the ancient social system, 
which they are-unable to change in a 
single lifetime. These evils must go, 
they say, but it is not given to us to 
make the effort of casting them out. 
The evils of seclusion (the zenana), 


‘““Holy men’’ in procession at a mela (fair) 


WE OFTEN HEAR IT SAID that 
modern civilization—the impact 
of the West upon India—will be 


the undoing of the caste. In the 
railway carriages, the public 
schools, the government offices, 


the courts of justice, caste is not 
recognized: the Brahman and the 
pariah must sit side by side. A 
few decades of this experience and 
the example of the Europeans, so 
it is argued, will be the death blow 
to caste. One might just as well 
argue that through the daily use 
of the subway New York will speed- 
ily have all its social, racial, and 
religious distinctions obliterated, 
black man and white man, Italian 
and Irishman,’ Catholic and Prot- 
estant, mingling freely in all re- 
lations because they have to rub 
shoulders on crowded platforms. 
Caste is a matter of the spirit; the 
laws and form are only its outward 
manifestation. They may change 
without any inward change. Asa 
matter of fact the regulations 
about eating and drinking and 
touching are less rigid than form- 
erly, yet caste is stronger than 
ever.—W. B. Hill in the Mission- 
ary Review of the World. 


34 


child marriage, and enforced widow- 
hood will pass from India in an ava- 
lanche when the soil has been sufficiently 
loosened, and all can move out at once. 
And on all sides is going on that loosen- 
ing. Some day there will be a roar, and 
a great chasm will appear in the 
ancient social system. 

“But that is not the home life I was 
thinking of. I was thinking that ere 
there can be peace in India, the differ- 
ent races, the different religions, the 
different castes, must become brothers 
together in a national homeland. You 
are Grays of different ages and sexes 
and education and experience, yet you 
sit about the family board; and home is 
ever in the background of your con- 
sciousness. You do not quarrel self- 
ishly; the good of all Grays is that 
which composes all divergence of opinion 
or desire. When one is ill, the others rush 
to aid and tend. When Miss Eleanor 
gives a party, the others help in the 
preparations. You are not all alike in 
thoughts or looks or aspirations, but in 
all the variety there is unity. And that 
unity is called home; these walls simply 
house it.” 


A Diverse People 


“Now, India—my land—has been no 
unity but always a great diversity. 
No race of all the Indian races, no 
people of all the Indian peoples there, 
has ever had the good of India at heart. 
But now comes the home longing in 
their hearts. “They desire a better 
country.’ They long for a unity in 
diversity, for the e pluribus unum that 
you are so proud of that you stamp it 
on your coins. Bengali, Punjabi, 
Maratha, Tamil, Hindustani, <a 
Ke “All the unpronounceables,” added 


‘Eleanor. 


“Yes, all the unpronounceables’— 
and Faz] Masih laughed aloud. “All 
my unpronounceable fellow Indians are 
feeling simultaneously the pull of some 
strange gravitation—nationalism, pa- 
triotism, motherland they call it— 
which is drawing them together, mak- 
ing a solar system out of wandering 
planets. They are no longer content 
with the home life of their caste, their 
religion, their tribe or language. The 
larger home—India—is opening its 
doors and bidding them enter. And 
they are entering, John; from all sides, 
all doors, they are going in. 

“But—and here is the calamity in it 
all—they are going in with all their old 
customs and prejudices. The unity of 


THE INQUIRY has established the 
propositions that the institution 
of caste is at least three thousand 
years old; that it is universally be- 
lieved to be of divine origin; that it 
concerns two hundred and fifty 
millions of people, more or less; 
that it involves the division of the 
whole Hindu population and a 
large part of the Moslem and 
Christian minority into about 
three thousand distinct hereditary 
castes without reckoning sub- 
castes; that no Hindu can escape 
from the dominion of caste; that, 
Hinduism and caste being one and 
and indivisible, the institution 
cannot be abolished, and will still 
last for centuries; that the su- 
premacy of the Brahman will con- 
tinue to be acknowledged; that 
superficial modifications in the 
details of practice do not affect the 
caste spirit, which has_ been 
strengthened by the Hindu re- 


the home is not in the new India; the 
great diversity continues. Two thirds 
of them (the Hindus) are split into 
castes, and between the castes there is 
little codperation. There are still the 
untouchables—one out of every six of 
the population. Suspicion exists be- 
tween lowcastes and highcastes, be- 
tween all other castes and the scheming 
Brahmans, highest of all. Not only 
Hindus among themselves, but Hindus 
and Moslems are divided in the pro- 
portion of some three to one. One 
third has all the pride of conquerors and 
former rulers, of monotheists and 
iconoclasts, of the chosen people of 
the supreme and only God (Allah); the 
two thirds, on the other hand, know 
that Moslem power has always broken 
under Hindu reaction and counter- 
attack, that numerical preponderance 
counts for much in this world, that their 
philosophies and religious literatures 
are more subtle and profound than the 
Moslem, and that, brain for brain, the 
Hindu can outmatch his rival. So the 
age-long strife between the two re- 
ligions, so vastly different from each 
other in all their attitudes and propo- 
sitions, goes on—below the surface or 
above. What home life can there be in 
my country when my fellow Indians 
do not and cannot sit down long as 
brothers, when there is no unity that all 
acknowledge, and that acknowledges 
all2”’ 


“Why not keep religion out of it, as 
we try to do in this country?” asked 
Mr. Gray. “We do not ask when we 
vote for our congressmen, senators, or 
even President which church he at- 
tends: why let caste or religion enter in 
at all into the matter of national unity? 
Has not America provided a solution for 


XII—The Present Opportunity 


vival; that the doctrine of the 
equality of all men before the law 
is opposed to the Hindu scriptures 
and the practice of Hindu govern- 
ments; that caste animosities, 
which are most bitter in the South, 
dating back for a thousand years or 
more, are as virulent as ever at this 
day; and that, consequently, peace 
and order require for their: preser- 
vation a strong and impartial 
executive. 

Those propositions state condi- 
tions which underlie all projects of 
constitutional reform and, for that 
reason, deserve the earnest at- 
tention of reformers and of Parlia- 
ment. No legislation can change 
them, and their gradual automatic 
relaxation must be deferred to a 
time so distant as to be beyond the 
vision of practical politics.—Vin- 
cent A. Smith in Indian Constitu- 


tional Reform. 


India, and the only solution possible for 
any democracy, which, I take vit, is 
what you mean by unity?” 


THE DEMOCRACY which the 
British seek to set up, the Mahara- 
jah of Alwar declared, would de- 
stroy all the foundations of caste 
and, with them, the Hindu re- 
ligion. Ina word, if caste remains, 
democracy will fail; if democracy 
succeeds, caste falls and, with it, 
the Hindu religion. Such a po- 
litical system would fail because it 
would have no basis in religion, 
the only firm foundation of any 
civilization. One could not sub- 
stitute, within a generation, a new 
basis of civilization, a new re- 
ligion.—C. H. Van Tyne in the 
Atlantic Monthly. 


“T have a better solution,” suggested 
John. “Let the Indian people make 
patriotism the lever by which the 
dividing caste system is toppled over 
and brought crashing to the ground. 
For India’s sake we will have no caste. 
For India’s sake we will reform our 
social organism so as to leave abundant 
room for codperation, For patriotism 
men will make heavier sacrifices than 
for anything else on earth, throwing 
comfort, ambition, wealth, youth, home, 
evens rencion- Vellind a theme. lon it 
not so?” 


Religion First in India 


Faz] Masih looked at them, then 
answered: “You remember what the 
Teacher said when he would reprimand 
without causing hurt. So I would say, 
‘Have I been so long time with you, and 
dost thou not know me’—or my 
people? Your solutions are practicable 
for your people, not for mine. My 
people have always put religion first; 
they are religious before they are any- 
thing else. Where your heroes have 
suffered in the name of patriotism— 
Washington, Lincoln, and others—, 
mine have suffered in the name of 
religion. Your national heroes are 
patriots; our heroes are religious teachers 
or demigods. Caste is religion; there- 
fore, caste abides until some other re- 
ligion takes the place of Hinduism. 
The Hindu-Moslem schism is primarily 
religious; therefore, 1t remains until 
both come together in some new and 
common religious relationship. But 
who shall work such miracles for India? 
Who can form a new caste within 
caste into which all castes may enter? 


Touching the ‘‘untouchable”’ 


35 


INDIA is awakening in every sense 
of the word, but unfortunately 
there is no one to guide her foot- 
steps at the present time. She isin 
asad plight. The situation is slip- 
ping into the hands of the ex- 
tremists, who may precipitate a 
violent revolution unless the rest 
of the sections succeed in quickly 
making up their minds as to the 
course of action and sticking to it. 
But, strangely, the influence of 
Christ in the situation is indubi- 
tably supreme. Almost every po- 
litical leader, of whatever shade of 
opinion, while he may ignore the 
existence of Christians or even 
condemn Christian propaganda in 
the land, is loud in quoting Christ’s 
teachings and referring to his life 
in his public utterances. The 
greatest man of the hour is un- 
doubtedly Gandhi, and it is being 
claimed by his followers that in all 
his activities he merely practices 
what Christ taught. This we may 
take to be a triumph for Christi- 
anity. Itcertainlyis.— A quotation 
from a personal letter from an 
Indian Christian. 


——— 
ee 


| SHEDEvevedeey 


Who can bring the Hindu and Moslem 
roads together into a road that has the 
best of Hinduism and the best of Islam?” 


How shall I describe the glowing 
earnestness of the young Christian 
Indian as he sat there in the light of the 
electric lamps, like a musician whose 
fingers at last have found the theme 
and the chords of some stirring march 
that drives his soul forward to grips 
with reality. We dared not interrupt 
him. 

Seeking a King 


“Who can furnish the rallying center 
of our new Indian national life? Who 
can make democracy really possible in 
India? Who can be the great sun in 
our confused system that can hold the 
various languages and races in their 
proper orbits by drawing them round 
and round himself in utter devotion to 
his spirit and purpose? Our center 
must be religious or it can-be no center 
for us, being constituted as we are. 
Our new center must come from 
without our national life, for thirty- 
five centuries have failed to reveal any- 
thing within our own borders which will 
change our centrifugal tendencies into 
centripetal, which will transform us 
from flying apart into flying together. 
It cannot come from you of the West 
as you are, because there is so much in 
your lives and practices which is ir- 
religious, materialistic, practical. Your 
civilization cannot unify us, for at heart 
we are suspicious of it and unfriendly 
to it. There is. too much of matter in 
it, and not enough of spirit. 

“So to-day, Mr. Gray, the wise men 


XII—The Present Opportunity 


of the East are once more bound on their 
mission. India to-day rides with its 
thinking men—its sincere earnest, In- 
dian minds—, rides hither and thither 
seeking him who is born King of their 
new national life, around whom all can 
rally—all the ‘unpronounceables’ of 
Miss Eleanor. They came into your 
West and they found him not; only 
Herods and their mighty civilizations— 
Herods who live in great palaces, build 
great temples, make their capitals 
wonders of the world, but slaughter 
prophets and children. Discouraged, 
they were about to turn back, thinking 
that the morning star of their new day, 
which hung low in the west, had de- 
ceived them, and that in India itself lay 
their King newborn. For you must 
know there have been many rumors in 
Indian history and literature, even as in 
Jewish history and literature, of a 
Messiah who was to come from their 
own villages, as one rumor has it, to be 
born in obscure Sambhal, as in obscure 
Bethlehem. So the Indian prophets 
have sung in their way: ‘And thou, 
Sambhal, land of Rohilkhand, art in 
no wise least among the cities of India; 
for out of thee shall come forth a 
governor, who shall be shepherd of my 
peoples.’ Back to their own river 
valleys they would turn, trying this and 
that phase of Swaraj (home rule) for a 
national center.” 


The Universal Christ 


“But to-day the eyes of many of 
India’s thinking men are on Him who 
was neither of you nor of us but came 
from the middle land, halfway between; 
who was neither fair as you nor dark as 
we are but of a color in between; who 
was in spirit both European and 
Asiatic. He lived at one time in a 
world of matter and in a world of spirit 
and was at home in both. In his 
Sermon on the Mount just now India is 
finding him whom it seeks. His words 
are on the lips of our national leaders; 
his story they read and reread in the 
quiet of their homes. The Sermon on 
the Mount, however, is only his manger; 
within it is his person—a person of 
religious significance and power. When 
India finds that and opens her treasures 
to him—those rich treasures of soul 
which she has been accumulating 
through the centuries of her history—, 
then will the new India go on her way 
rejoicing, for it has found the King 
who unifies and glorifies her life.” 

He stopped speaking. Ere we could 
add a word to this, a fresh light came 
into his face, and he spoke on: 

“Not only for India’s unity—for 
India’s home life—but for the unity 
and home life of all races on our planet 

36 


has the Christ come. Is not the human 
race passing from diversity to unity? 
Does it not need a new center? Who 
but the Teacher himself can make 
disciples of all nations and races? Who 
but he can overlay all their prejudices— 
racial, national, social, intellectual, re- 
ligious,—with a coating of his own 
spirit of mutual recognition and co- 
operation? So I see him to-day passing 
along, calling some nations from their 
more complex ways of living—from the 
‘seats of custom’ of trade and tariff and 
taxes—and other nations from their 
simpler life—from the fisherman’s boat 
—but calling all in order to disciple 
them, that all together may build on 
earth a kingdom of heaven, which is to 
his way of thinking a family circle of 
God and men. 

“India to-day hears his voice and 
listens. To her, boats and nets, hired 
men and parents, are as nothing if the 
Voice and the Face are not a mask of 
some Western, materialistic, selfish 
civilization but are indeed the light and 
life of the world.” 


The Gift of a Life 


It was Mr. Gray who broke the 
silence—broke it with these strange 
words: 

“John, you may go with him to India. 
Eleanor, you are too young to decide 
anything. You belong right here. 
Fazl Masih, not India speaking in facts 
and figures but India speaking in you 
has won me. Mother, isn’t it about 
time to send them all to bed?” 

That was all he said; but the feeble, 


forced smile at the close betrayed to | 


me how heavy had been the conflict 
and how hard-won the victory. 


Discussion Questions 


WHAT ABOVE ALL does India need 
to-day? Why? 

In what sense does India lack home 
life? Explain. 

If the American people were as 
diversified as are the people of India, 
could we have a democracy? 

What is to bring about the needed 
unity in India’s national existence? 

Can patriotism alone do it? 

If India’s point of view is essen- 
tially religious, what is the logical solu- 
tion? 

In what sense is India like the Wise 
Men of old—seeking the newborn 
King? Are we in America playing the 
part of Herod? ; 

What might Christ mean to India, 
with its peculiar spiritual possessions? 

Have we, like Mr. Gray, young lives 
to give to India? 


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